WORKS BY LEONARDO: WHICH THEY ARE AND WHERE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORKS ARE HOUSED

The fascination of Leonardo’s masterpieces, famous and beautiful works, makes everybody agree. In the collective imagination Leonardo is the universal genius, an architect, a scientist, an artist and an engineer, a precursor of times who has left in total only around 20 paintings.

In this post, I’ll make a list of the most beautiful works of the great genius of the Renaissance and the places where you can admire them.

Works by Leonardo: which they are and where they are housed

The Last Supper- Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan (detail)

WORKS BY LEONARDO IN ITALY

The Last Supper – Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan
In the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Leonardo da Vinci depicts the most tragic scene of the Gospels: Judas’s betrayal.
The work created by Leonardo to portray the Last Supper is full of emotions and the composition consists of the feelings expressed by each character.
Booking your entrance ticket to the Last Supper is mandatory to see the work.

The Vitruvian Man – Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
It’s Leonardo’s most perfect example of symmetry.
It’s the Vitruvian Man, housed in Venice and displayed to the public only occasionally due to the fragility of the material on which it was drawn.
The drawing was made in 1490, and it’s the graphic representation of the proportions of the human body described in the treatise De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius (1st century BC).
For further information read the post The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci: why is it called that?

The Vitruvian Man- Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

The Annunciation – Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation was housed for 400 years in a small church on the hills of Florence.
Leonardo probably painted this work when was still an apprentice in the workshop of Verrocchio and he used light to create space and aerial perspective to create depth.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Annunciation – Uffizi Gallery

WORKS BY LEONARDO IN EUROPE

The Mona Lisa – Louvre Museum, Paris
Little is known about the Mona Lisa, but we know that Leonardo began working on it starting from 1503, when he was in Florence; but the painting is now held at the Louvre Museum because Leonardo died in France and the work entered the art collection of King Francis I.
Every year thousands of visitors go to the Louvre Museum to admire the Mona Lisa. The easiest way to enter the Museum and skip the line is to book your ticket to see the Louvre museum online.

The Mona Lisa

The Lady with an Ermine – National Museum, Kraków
Cecilia wasn’t a woman like any other. She was refined, cultured, beautiful and was a very influential person in Milan during the Renaissance. She’s the Lady with an Ermine.
Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, was enchanted by this woman, who also bore him a son, and he kept her close to him by giving Palazzo Carmagnola to her, where Leonardo da Vinci left a sun-dial inside the courtyard (still visible today) maybe in the same period in which he painted this portrait.

The Lady with an Ermine

The Virgin of the Rocks – National Gallery, London
The second version of the Virgin of the Rocks is housed in London (the first version hangs in the Louvre Museum) and due to failure to comply with the payments, Leonardo decided to paint two versions of the same subject.
The London version decorated the altar of the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan, according to the clients’ will, the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.
The first version of the painting, instead, entered the collection of masterpieces of Ludovico il Moro or Charles VIII, King of France.

On the left the Virgin of the Rocks held at the Louvre; on the right the London version.

READ ALSO – Salvator Mundi: world auction record for the painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci