French Follower of Leonardo da Vinci, late 17th Century

This painting is a rare 17th-century copy after Leonardo da Vinci's iconic image of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.¹ As a 17th-century copy, it must have been painted by an artist with access to the private rooms of Louis XIII, where Leonardo's panel hung from 1636, when it was presented to the King by Cardinal Richelieu. Works in the French Royal collection were very hard to access before the Revolution (1789-99) and it was primarily court painters who were granted this privilege. It was only after the Revolution that the Royal collection became accessible to the public via the creation of museums such as the Musée du Louvre. Most other copies of this composition are instead based on Leonardo's cartoon, copies after the cartoon (the most renowned being that owned by Padre Resta, lost in Budapest during WW2 but recorded in photographs,² and that in Turin which is widely attributed to Bernardo Lanino)³, or deriving from Salai's version on panel today in the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.⁵ 

¹ https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066107 ² https://museopoldipezzoli.it/en/paintings/#/dettaglio/119309_Madonna%20con%20Bambino%20e%20agnello

³ V. Delieuvin, La Sainte Anne: l'ultime chef-d'oeuvre de Léonard de Vinci, Paris 2012, pp. 100-01, cat. no. 25, reproduced.

⁴ Delieuvin 2012, pp. 105-06, cat. no. 28, reproduced.

⁵ Delieuvin 2012, pp. 166-71, cat. no. 50, reproduced.