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56-1 La Belle Ferronnière: Dating and Key Characteristics

Leonardo da Vinci was 30 years old in 1482 when he moved to Milan to serve Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508), the de facto ruler of the Duchy of Milan, and he remained active there until 1499. His painting Portrait of a Woman (no. 56), known today as La Belle Ferronnière, is believed to have been painted during the latter part of his stay in Milan. The profile style of portrait was still popular in Milan at that time, but Leonardo adopted the three-quarter view developed earlier by painters in northern Europe, particularly those in the Netherlands.

Closer inspection of the posture of the woman reveals a device characteristic of Leonardo’s work. He depicted the woman so that her body and head face in slightly different directions rather than facing in the same direction. Scientific examination of the work conducted in 2014 and 2015 revealed that, in the process of painting the piece, Leonardo made subtle changes to the contours of the back of her head, her back, and her neck, thereby enhancing the sense of motion. That may have made the overall sense of movement more pronounced, making it seem as if the woman had been captured at the very moment she turned towards the viewer, thereby imbuing her with a greater sense of vitality. In addition, it was discovered that Leonardo also shifted the position of the pupil in the woman’s right eye slightly to the left. It is thought that this may have been intended to make the direction of her gaze feel more ambiguous. It does seem that the woman is looking back at us, but it also seems as if she is looking somewhere to our right or behind us, making it difficult to determine what she is truly feeling.

Renaissance theorists and painters placed great importance on capturing and communicating a subject’s innermost thoughts through expressions and gestures, and Leonardo was particularly serious about taking on that challenge. Leonardo’s meticulous adjustments to the woman’s head, body, and gaze in La Belle Ferronnière may have been his attempt to capture the ever-changing complexities of human emotion.