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Berwick St James Art Appreciation

The Virgin of the Rocks The Virgin of the Rocks

The Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519

he Virgin of the Rocks was commissioned as an altarpiece by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, Milan in 1483. Famous for his failure to complete commissions, this original version in the Louvre was Leonardo’s most complex completed work to date and remains to this day one of his most renowned. Within a rocky grotto, the pyramid-like composition holds the four figures in a tight exchange of nuanced and subtle gestures and gazes.