Four extant portraits were undoubted painted by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, that are the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani or The Lady with Ermine, La belle ferronnière, and Mona Lisa. These portraits were well researched in the past. However, the uniqueness of Leonardo’s female portraits, how his representation of female beauty differs from others, were not fully elaborated. The essential uniqueness that will be discussed is the fact that both realism and unrealism, or idealized female images are depicted in his portraits.
The first extant portrait by Leonardo was the Ginevra de' Benci, which Leonardo probably did for the commision to commemorate her marriage with Luigi Niccolini in 1474 at the age of…show more content… Blended, dissolved and unified in the painting, nature elements played a vital role in the composition. This is not the first attempt that Leonardo made to include nature. His early works, such as Annunciation already showed his interests in harmonizing the natural backdrop with the subject figures. However, in this painting, he gave nature a more important mission: that is to idealize the subject by using nature as metaphors. 原句The juniper bush contrasting with the pale flesh tones of Ginevra’s countenance dominates our overall impression of the image. Placed in the middle ground, the juniper is more than a mere ornamental accessory; it was regarded as a symbol of female virtue. The nature background also shows the woman’s role in society at the time: to give birth to sons who inherited the family name and fortune and daughters who allied it to other lineages. The backdrop of teeming, fertile nature against which Ginevra is portrayed could have been read by the contemporary viewer as an embodiment of her fertility as wife of Luigi Niccolini. (Virtue and Beauty) The complicated and unusual background, even too prominent in the composition, is a major unrealistic depiction. However, it serves as a strong instrument to convey messages to the
