Ginevra de' Benci

A portrait of a young woman of Florence

Ginevra de' Benci was the daughter of a wealthy banking family of Florence, closely linked to the Medici. Educated and admired, she wrote poetry; one line survives, in which she asks forgiveness and describes herself as a mountain tiger. Leonardo da Vinci, then in his early twenties and still working in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, painted her portrait around 1474–1478.

The portrait may have been made for her marriage in 1474 to Luigi Niccolini, or, more likely according to recent research, for Bernardo Bembo, the Venetian ambassador to Florence, who admired her in a platonic, poetic friendship.

The face

Ginevra looks out with a pale, serious, almost melancholy expression. Her face is lit softly, with delicate modelling that already shows Leonardo's interest in the transitions between light and shadow. Her skin seems to glow against the dark foliage behind her.

Detail 1Zoom to detail

The curls

Her hair is parted in the middle and pulled back, with fine ringlets falling around her face. Leonardo painted each curl with great delicacy, and some of them catch the light like threads of gold. He even used his fingers to blend the paint in places: his fingerprints can be seen in the surface.

Detail 2Zoom to detail

The juniper

Behind her rises a dark juniper bush, whose spiky leaves frame her head like a halo. The juniper, ginepro in Italian, is a pun on her name, Ginevra. It was also a symbol of chastity, an appropriate virtue for a young woman of her rank.

Detail 3Zoom to detail

The landscape

On the right, the dark foliage opens onto a misty landscape with trees and water, painted in soft blues and greens that fade into the distance. It is one of the first landscape backgrounds in Italian portraiture to suggest atmosphere and depth so convincingly.

Detail 4Zoom to detail

The painted reverse

The back of the panel is also painted: a wreath of laurel and palm surrounding a sprig of juniper, with a scroll bearing the Latin motto Virtutem forma decorat, "Beauty adorns virtue". The laurel and palm were the emblem of Bernardo Bembo, which supports the idea that he commissioned the portrait. The bottom of the panel was cut off at some point, probably removing Ginevra's hands; a drawing by Leonardo of hands at Windsor may be a study for them.

Seeing Ginevra de' Benci

The portrait is small, about 39 by 37 centimetres, painted in oil and tempera on wood. It was bought in 1967 from the Princes of Liechtenstein by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for a then-record price. It is the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas.