Ginevra de' Benci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) · c. 1474–1478
A pale young Florentine poet gazes past us, framed by a spiky juniper bush — a pun on her name, ginepro.
Why it matters
Leonardo's earliest surviving portrait already abandons the profile convention, turning the sitter three-quarters toward the viewer.
What to notice
The porcelain smoothness of her skin against the dark juniper; Leonardo blended the flesh tones with his fingers — his prints survive in the paint.
Context
Painted when Leonardo was barely in his twenties, still in Verrocchio's Florentine workshop.
Themes
Virtue, melancholy, the emblematic language of Renaissance portraiture.
Legacy
The only Leonardo painting in the Americas, anchor of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
About the artist
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Painter, engineer, anatomist and inventor, Leonardo embodied the Renaissance ideal of universal genius. He finished few paintings, but each redefined what painting could do.
Renaissance (c. 1400–1600): Born in the city-states of Italy, the Renaissance revived the learning of antiquity and placed the human figure — observed, measured, idealized — at the center of art. Painters mastered perspective, anatomy, and oil glazing, and the artist rose from anonymous craftsman to celebrated genius.
Walk the Grand Gallery → See this painting hung in its wing, with music and guided tours, in the full virtual museum.