Gallery work
Story and context
A small, unfinished head of a young woman with downcast eyes and loose, dishevelled hair, painted in earth colours and white on a wooden panel.
Scapigliata means dishevelled. The hair is only a few quick brushstrokes, while the face is softly modelled, eyes lowered, a smile beginning.
No one knows what it was for. It may be a study for a Madonna or for a lost Leda, or simply a work he kept for himself. It might be the head mentioned in the 1531 inventory of the Gonzaga collection in Mantua, which Leonardo visited after leaving Milan in 1499.
Like many of his late works, it is about turning a form slowly out of shadow, and about stopping before everything has been said.
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by Mei Lin 