There are two other portraits that are attributed on good grounds to Leonardo during the same years as the portrait of Cecilia: Portrait of a Musician [Plate 31], now at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, and the portrait of a woman today at the Louvre, generally known as the Belle Ferronière [Plate 32].
According to some, the first painting was completed in collaboration with Antonio Boltraffio around 1485, four years before the portrait of Cecilia, and it is said to represent his friend, Atalante Migliorotti, a musician and actor with whom he had left Florence. Not only was Atalante a talented musician; he was exceptionally handsome as well. There is no direct documentary link between the portrait and Leonardo, except for an inventory of the collection of Galeazzo Arconati that dates from 1637 and catalogues it as a painting by Leonardo. Although the painting has been accepted as autograph by most modern scholars, it is difficult to reconcile it with Leonardo’s style on account of the emphatic contrast of the face – emphatic, that is, both in colours and in chiaroscuro – which clashes sharply with Leonardo’s soft manner, already seen in the portrait of Ginevra Benci. Unlike in all the other paintings by the artist, the outline of the profile is very visible, so much so that it would be very easy to create a graphic relief – and the result would be very expressive, too. The pose is quite rigid, the edges are traced using a fine dark line, and even the hair seems compact and stiffly curled – not like the softly gentle cascades on the angel from the Baptism. The eyelids, especially the upper ones, are edged with a continuous dark line that dampens the expression and takes the softness away from the physiognomy and the gaze, leaving them stiff, as in an automaton.
The light to which the sitter is exposed is very different from the indirect light that Leonardo loved and could theorize with great clarity about. It is a harsh light, which draws only some features out of the darkness, almost completely eliminating others. The brushstrokes, which are distinct and full, strongly mark the outlines of the eyelids, the nose and the mouth, and in the slightly melancholic expression there is nothing of the mystery that is evident in other portraits by Leonardo. The colour contrasts are accentuated; the dark chestnut eyes and the brilliant red lips are far away from the faint traces of colour that play on the features of other characters. The clothes seem excessively simple, in broad blocks of colour without any careful study or surprises, even if its present condition may in part be due to a heavy-handed restoration. Even if Leonardo did contribute to the planning of this painting and played a role in its execution, another artist worked on it, moving it further away from the pictorial poetics of the master – if by ‘pictorial poetics’ we understand a precise way of re-creating the image and placing it in space and light without ever exaggerating the tone of the shadows and the chromatic contrasts but, on the contrary, allowing the face and the expression to emerge from the effects of the light and from the substance of the fabric, be it textiles or tissues of the body.
The painting of the Belle Ferronière is very different. This portrait of a woman, made on a walnut panel measuring 63 × 45 cm, dates from around 1490 and is therefore closely associated with the portrait of Cecilia. Again, there are no documents to confirm that the painting came from Leonardo’s workshop, but it is universally accepted as an autograph painting of the master’s. It was present in Francis I’s private apartment at Fontainebleau together with other Italian paintings, including Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks and Saint John. Later records of the painting in French collections – in Paris in the late seventeenth century, at Versailles in 1692, and finally at the Louvre by the end of the eighteenth century – confirm a long tradition of attribution.
The title is inspired by the cloth band worn by the model around her head, with a tiny gem in the centre. Even if the pose is more static than that of Cecilia, the image receives added dynamism from the woman’s elusive gaze, which moves beyond the viewer, to fix, with measured concentration, something approaching from the other side of the balustrade behind which she shelters. The physiognomy of the woman, who is elegantly dressed, is much more sensual than that of Cecilia Gallerani, but the skin is rendered with equal delicacy in both paintings. The Belle Ferronière has a mouth that, like Cecilia’s, is formed through the slight infusion of pink on the lips, while its expression relies on the play of shadow and light.
From a theoretical point of view, the painting is surprising for the reflected lights that Leonardo creates in the shaded areas of the face. By this date the artist had reached an advanced stage in his study of optics, where he explored the effect of lights reflected on solids. Here the direct light that falls on the right-hand side of the face is just slightly more intense than the diffuse light that a reflective surface radiates onto the neck and left-hand cheek. The light is so diffuse that it is almost impossible to see any contrast in the necklace around her neck, which hangs with perfect symmetry in the centre of her breast, well hidden by the velvet and silk chemise embroidered with gold thread, in a pattern of entwined palm leaves and flowers. The border of the hairnet of silver threads can just be seen on her head, gathering the upper part of the plait that peeks out from behind her shoulders and neck.
From a pictorial point of view, the painting seems more mature than that of Cecilia Gallerani, because the tonal harmony (which reinforces the effect of the sfumato) is much more effective than in the earlier portrait, where the colours were brighter and more contrasting. The woman’s face, as well as her hair and clothing, are all coloured in warm tones, with a filter verging slightly towards red and gold and thus creating an overall vision that is highly seductive and, once again, unrealistic. The tonal unity achieved by using different nuances of red all over the painting produces a rosy haze in which the intimate and dim atmosphere of a domestic interior takes shape. Here again, the lines defining the outline of the nose and eyes have vanished. The upper eyelids are faintly marked by shadow, but the lower ones are almost indistinguishable, except through the warmer tone visible against the white of the eye.
Leonardo carries here much further this process of eliminating the drawn line; he is no longer interested in describing the model but rather in creating a visual impression. The material consistency of the individual elements of the image starts to melt, as if seen through a rose-tinged glass. Only the light defines the differing intensity of matter, and only light describes the hair (now almost entirely absorbed within a single golden brown mass), the pale skin on shoulders and face, and the fabrics, which lose their tactile quality to become pure, soft colour. The most original effect of this new form of painting, imbued with infinite gradations of light, is apparent in the joining of the chin to the slightly shaded neck, where a thin strip of paler skin, almost a reflection from the shoulder, is used to outline the very gentle curve of the jaw and fades away as the hair starts to curve, highlighting a slight crease in the skin that is smoothed out at the front of the neck.
That sensation of an unfathomable quality in the gaze is created by the luminosity of the woman’s eyes; it uses a technique that is more sophisticated than that used in the portrait of Cecilia and far superior to that implemented in the Portrait of a Musician. The iris is painted in very pale chestnut colour and, to give it a watery substance, Leonardo darkens the outer edge and lightens the part in contact with the black pupil; he then uses an almost white brushstroke to mark the light, at which the woman is staring and which can be seen reflected in her eyes. As always, Leonardo transposed onto his painting the results of his scientific research, which in these years concentrated on the study of optics and of the mechanisms of sight. The imperceptible luminous dot in the upper part of the pupil condenses the light and reflects the main light source that illuminates the face. This leap forward in the realism of the image – which is not present in the portrait of Cecilia – gives the Belle Ferronière an almost disturbing quality, entirely due to the assurance and emotional calm of her gaze, which seems ready to challenge any confrontation. The painting is very important because it offers evidence of the advanced level of Leonardo’s scientific research shortly after 1490; and it also helps us to gain a much better understanding of what would soon become the style of his greatest masterpiece, The Last Supper, which has unfortunately survived in such a disastrous state of conservation as to be partly illegible.