Focus on Madonna of the Yarnwinder and explain the Description.
The composition of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder shows the Christ child twisting his body away from his mother's embrace, his eye caught by her niddy-noddy whose arms (crosspieces) give it the shape of a cross; he precociously recognises it as a symbol of his destiny. The Virgin's reaction is ambiguous, a mixture of alarm at the harm her son will come to and resigned acceptance of it. The gesture of suspense made with her right hand is repeated from Leonardo's Milanese altarpiece The Virgin of the Rocks. The use of a symbol of the Passion as an object of childish play recurs throughout Leonardo's paintings, appearing for instance in the Benois Madonna and the Virgin and Child with St Anne. The depiction of the Virgin spinning also alludes to her antitype, Eve, who was sometimes portrayed spinning wool after her expulsion from Paradise, accompanied by her infant sons Cain and Abel. The iconography therefore recalls humanity's fall, its ensuing travails and its redemption through Christ's sacrifice.As with later works by Leonardo, the figures appear in a vast unpopulated landscape. The rocky outcrop in the foreground of the Buccleuch Madonna is painted with a minute attention to geological detail. A major difference between the Buccleuch and Lansdowne Madonnas is in their background landscapes. Whereas the background of the Buccleuch version is a watery landscape indifferently painted, that of the Lansdowne Madonna has a dramatic mountain range far more typical of Leonardo. It has been proposed that this is a specific location in the valley of the river Adda, as it runs from Lecco to Vaprio, an area familiar to Leonardo and which he mapped. It is possible that the landscape of the former picture was added by a pupil after Leonardo failed to complete the work. For Martin Kemp the “late” character of the landscape in the Lansdowne Madonna suggests that it was the later painting to be completed and that the Buccleuch Madonna was the one sent to Robertet in 1507.The underdrawings of both the Buccleuch and Lansdowne Madonnas show several features not in the finished works, but present in some copies; it is likely that these were originally copied from the prime versions during an early stage of the composition's development. One such feature, which appears in both underdrawings, is a group of figures identified as Saint Joseph making a baby walker for the Christ child, who appears with his mother and another female figure, probably a midwife. It has also been suggested that the child learning to walk is the infant John the Baptist, appearing with his mother Saint Elizabeth, as Leonardo would have been unlikely to depict the figures of Mary and Christ twice in the same painting. Leonardo also experimented with including some kind of beast of burden – a horse, ass or ox – which appears in different positions in the two underdrawings. Behind these an architectural structure with an arched opening was planned. At a later stage the landscape of the Buccleuch picture seems to have had a bridge like that of the Lansdowne Madonna, which was then painted over.
expulsion from Paradise Christ child Passion Cain and Abel antitype John the Baptist beast of burden Eve Leonardo niddy-noddy Saint Elizabeth Yarn prime version Adda Benois Madonna Virgin of the Rocks Lecco iconography The Virgin of the Rocks underdrawing baby walker Saint Joseph Virgin and Child with St Anne Vaprio