Showing posts with label the national gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the national gallery. Show all posts

Saturday, July 30, 2011

yet another visit to the leonardo cartoon prompts a minor brainstorm ...




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_and_Child_with_St_Anne_and_St_John_the_Baptist

i've probably sat in front of this drawing forty times in forty years but usually with less than full concentration

today i consciously searched the picture for fresh details and allowed my attention to spend some time in the lower "incomplete" part of the drawing

leonardo has been quoted as saying  something like "art is never finished, only abandoned"

ho hum !  i'm not sure if the suggestion i'm about to make can be taken seriously ... i have no scholarly axe to grind because i am not a scholar, i don't have the mental strength to do serious research and juggle other people's ideas ... but i want to ask, are the ladies' feet cooling in a stream of water ?

someone may have suggested this before but how would i know ? ... and if they are cooling their toes, then how would roman catholics have interpreted the image six hundred ( correction: WHOOPS ! ONLY FIVE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN ... ) years ago ?  your scholarly answers on a postcard, toot sweet, please ?