Gallery work
Story and context
Mary, the infant John, the Christ child and an angel gather in a grotto of rock and water. The first of two versions, painted soon after he reached Milan.
The contract, signed on 25 April 1483 with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception at San Francesco Grande in Milan, asked for a central panel inside a carved altar. A long dispute over payment followed, and this first version seems never to have been delivered. It reached the French royal collection, probably by way of Louis XII.
The figures form a pyramid in deep shade. The angel looks out at us and points to John, linking us to the scene. Around them grow plants a botanist can name, and the rocks are layered and weathered like real geology.
Light falls softly from the upper left, and the faces emerge from darkness by degrees. This is the method he would later call painting without lines or borders, "in the manner of smoke".
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by Mei Lin 