Anatomy of a Masterpiece: Part 1 of 5: Leonardo and Ginevra de Benci
Aneta Georgievska-Shine, professor of art history, University of Maryland

Aneta Georgievska-Shine will present a five-part series, Anatomy of a Masterpiece: Leonardo to Caravaggio. Each lecture will focus on one master artist and one masterpiece. Some works of art are famous because they provide a memorable expression of the cultural ideals of a particular social and historical context. Some gain their place within the canon because of the ways in which they subvert those ideals. And still others become important not merely on account of their “quality”, if one can use that term, but also because of the many questions they raise and leave frustratingly open-ended. We may know who created them and under what circumstances, but we often seem unable to reach conclusions regarding the artist’s intent, or how these works would have been understood by his or her contemporaries. In this series of lectures, we explore such works of art from the early modern era – highlighting both what makes them exceptional, and how they fit within their broader context.

Ginevra de Benci: Widely recognized as the first portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, this painting is remarkable on many levels – among them as one of the earliest depictions of a lady in Italian art who is shown turning towards the beholder rather than in profile. Though we know a lot about the sitter, we cannot be certain about the year in which she was portrayed (1474? 1478?), nor even about the reasons that led to the creation of this image. Many other facets of this painting add to its mystery. Why did Leonardo paint both the front and the back of this panel, something he would never do again? Why does this young woman look so pensive, and so “marble-like”? And what is the meaning of the inscription on the back? In this lecture, we will consider these and other puzzling aspects of this remarkable portrait – the only painting by Leonardo in the Western hemisphere.

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