The Met’s Understated Madonna: A Rare Leonardo da Vinci Masterpiece Goes on View Without Fanfare

More Americans than ever in London these days seem to be searching for cultural treasures and I am left wondering why? A single visit to MOMA is quite enough to disabuse you of the notion that there is any European art worth seeing in its continent of origin. Increasingly, I have to travel to America, from London, where I presently live, to experience anything approximating cultural treasures. New York still has the vibrancy of a truly cosmopolitan city and the cultural cachet to match; London meanwhile is plodding along in a state of protracted melancholy — as if attending some very boring party under dire obligation. Emblematic of this widening gap between the two cities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was recently loaned an original Leonardo da Vinci painting, “Madonna of the Yarnwinder” and quietly put it on display. There was no press release, no media fanfare. It was all rather stylishly done. I had heard tell from a friend at the Ben Uri Gallery in London that this little-whispered treasure was on display at the Met and — on a brief trip over the Atlantic — I determined to see it. I rounded the corner into gallery 609 and saw to my right a tiny little painting. Much like the “Mona Lisa” in Paris, whose painting is towered over by those around her, the “Madonna” sits between two much larger images — perhaps a conscious nod to the Louvre.The painting in question is one of two original copies of “Madonna of the Yarnwinder,” which Leonardo is thought to have painted in 1501. This copy belonged to the Marquess of Lansdowne — hence its alternative name, the “Lansdowne Madonna” — and passed into the possession of hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who has loaned it to the Met since the spring.While this copy has enjoyed a relatively tranquil existence, perhaps reflected in the relatively little fanfare around her display, her sister made headlines twenty years ago for entirely different reasons. On display in Scotland, four men approached the so-called “Buccleugh Madonna” — which was hanging innocently on a wall — removed it and ran out of the castle with it. This “Madonna and the Yarnwinder” was spirited away in a white Volkswagen Golf. Much like Leonardo’s more famous “Mona Lisa,” theft and recovery are central to the piece’s dark glamour. Thankfully this copy, however, has not experienced the same troubled history as her sister. Even though it is exceptionally rare for a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece to be shown outside Europe, when I visited the Met the room was entirely empty of people as I moved closer to the Madonna and her child. Her blue cloth seemed to sparkle all these hundreds of years later, her forehead radiating with divine illumination. Behind her, the jagged blue-white mountains — from the valley of the river Adda which Leonardo knew well — put me in mind of the soaring peaks of Idaho. The tiny, little bridge to her right is the very same as the one which sits behind “Mona Lisa.”My British grandmother, who first taught me to look at paintings and had studied History of Art at Edinburgh, would have stood behind me when I was a child, a hand on my shoulder, and whispered softly in my ear, “Now step back a little, see how the painting changes as you walk — that’s what great art does.”From a few paces back, her expression came into clearer focus and the colours thickened and darkened like storm clouds stirring over the Manhattan skyline. She gazed in arrested wonder at her son, holding him lightly, but letting him reach forward to play with the skein winder, now bare of any wool and resembling with grisly foreboding the cross on which he would one day sacrifice himself. His object of play was to be his fate and yet she looked on, as if she knew that love was in the letting go. Leonardo had made this Christ more mortal and more classical — he shared Madonna’s golden brown hair which curled in whorls and his body resembling the fat baby Cupid, and there was a touch too of another classical tale: Thetis who tried desperately to shield Achilles from his death at Troy, disguising him as a girl on an island to keep him safe from the draft.Leonardo does more with this painting than the “Mona Lisa.” This is a painting of a mother who must watch as her son meets his fate. It is a study of love and sacrifice and it brings mortality to the divine. But it is also a story that’s deeply personal to Leonardo, one woven into a landscape he knew intimately. Quite unlike the Louvre’s busy and clichéd offering, this precious opportunity at the Metropolitan Museum gives art lovers a private moment with this extraordinary part of Leonardo’s oeuvre. Perhaps as a nod to the fact he had help from his pupils in its creation, the Met credits the “Madonna of the Yarnwinder” to “Leonardo da Vinci and Studio.”Here again, surrounded by the conspicuous absence of hype, is yet another world class work on display for anyone in this great city to see. Here is another example of the quiet nonchalance to a New York very much in her stride as the cultural capital of the world.

The Met’s Understated Madonna: A Rare Leonardo da Vinci Masterpiece Goes on View Without Fanfare

The Met’s Understated Madonna: A Rare Leonardo da Vinci Masterpiece Goes on View Without Fanfare

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