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MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM Melzi, Figino and the Mona Lisa

(14.4.2023) It is known since the 1990s that a painting in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin – a painting by Girolamo Figino (center below) – is also a seminal document regarding the reception of the Mona Lisa. And this due to the fact that this painting in the Berlin museum shows a slightly altered version of the Mona Lisa hands. It is however striking that Leonardo scholarship has, up to the present day, never made much of this fact (which also seems to be unknown to some alleged luminaries of Leonardo studies). It is, however, of absolutely primary importance to follow these hands, because connoisseurship, the ›dividing of hands‹, depends upon solid genealogies. And the genealogy of Girolamo Figino, apparently pupil of Francesco Melzi, who was nobody else than the heir of Leonardo, and also his pupil, is of primary importance. And for mysterious reasons, and not to the benefit of Leonardo and Leonardeschi connoisseurship, this genealogy has been neglected. Until now.

(Picture: kunstbeziehung.de)

1) Long Known, But Never Taken Into Account

Perhaps the fact was known, but never visibly so, and it needed the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, in 2017/18, to exhibit a choice of paintings from the (basement) study collection and the depot, in the special exhibition »In Neuem Licht«, so that we can show a picture of the Figino painting at all, and so that we can show the reception of the Mona Lisa in this painting. And it seems obvious that the painting by Girolamo Figino, which is a posthumous portrait of Margherita Colleoni (who died in 1483), paraphrases the Mona Lisa hands, and the Gemäldegalerie Berlin dates the painting by Figino (c. 1520-c. 1569) to c. 1530 (which is slightly absurd, because this would be ten-year-old Figino).
For mysterious reasons neither Figino, nor this painting are mentioned in Martin Kemp’s 2017 monograph on the Mona Lisa, which delves into the known facts as to Raphael responding to the Mona Lisa, and also as to the Salaì inventories of 1525 and 1530. One would expect a book that covers also the ›rise to fame‹ of the Mona Lisa, not to omit such important landmarks in the reception history of this iconic painting. Why is the painting by Figino a landmark? Because current scholarship is assuming that Figino was a pupil of Francesco Melzi, the heir of Leonardo; and who would have taught, inspired or mentored Figino to paint these hands, if not the person, who was one of the most intimate associates of Leonardo da Vinci, and who inherited ›everything that had to do with his profession as a painter‹, and who might even have painted a copy or version of the Mona Lisa himself? And if this was indeed the case, we have here a painting that is redolent of the most direct influence of Leonardo – via his pupil Melzi. And if this is true we have found a most important model, which might be useful to interpret and to understand better what happened after the death of Leonardo in Lombard painting, and with Leonardesque motifs.

2) Asking for the Backstory

If we are raising many questions here, we do not claim to have found all the answers to these questions. Is it an established fact that Melzi was a teacher of Figino, a mentor, an influence, perhaps a friend who also allowed him to work with Leonardo’s workshop drawings? Lomazzo says that Figino also owned a number of Leonardo drawings himself, and one may assume that these had been given to him by Melzi.
What we know is that in paintings that now are attributed to Figino we find influences of Melzi paintings (of which one particularly important, the Vertumnus and Pomona, is also in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin). And what we know is that it does make sense to raise the question of what kind of backstory might be behind these paraphrased Mona Lisa hands in the above portrait. Does this type of reception – in a posthumous portrait, in profile – also shed light on the Mona Lisa, since one has also assumed that also the Mona Lisa might show a person that had died before the painting had actually been finished by Leonardo? These are open questions, but the bearing of the relation between the above shown portrait and the Mona Lisa is even wider than one might realize at first sight: the relevance of the Colleoni portrait might also be that of a reference to be compared with another cluster of Leonardesque works: the Monna Vanna (vulgo: the ›nude Mona Lisa‹). And it is striking that the Hermitage version of the Monna Vanna actually shows a hand, the left hand of the sitter, which is closer to the Figino hand than to the Mona Lisa hand (and has nothing to do with the Chantilly nude Mona Lisa). What might be the bearing of this new observation, of this new find?

3) Relevance: The Hermitage Monna Vanna

The question that I am asking here, is the question if the Hermitage Monna Vanna might be by Girolamo Figino as well. And of course I know that one places (or at least Martin Kemp places) the Hermitage nude Mona Lisa into the workshop of Leonardo, dating it c. 1515. Yet it seems to me that this is a questionable view, and also an outdated view, in view of the similarities which we are observing, if indeed, as we do here, we are dedicating ourselves to a philology of the eye: the left hand of the sitter in the Figino painting is close to the left hand in the Hermitage Monna Vanna, with two fingers like inverted commas, while the other fingers are barely visible at all – and also the type of drapery folds is similar. Enough to think of and to suggest the hypothesis that much, actually everything might be wrong concerning the attributions of the various Monna Vanna versions, since I don’t see a necessity to place any of them into the Leonardo workshop at all. And if indeed we have a reference, with the Figino painting, which might be convincingly attributed and dated or not, we have to work with it, testing all hypotheses imaginable. Concerning the Monna Vanna, but also using such new perspectives and ideas, a possible genealogy from Leonardo, via Melzi, to Girolamo Figino, and perhaps – if Girolamo Figino was the father of Giovanni Ambrogio – to Giovanni Ambrogio Figino, in all kinds of areas. If such genealogy can be established, and it seems to be the case that it can, we would have found a model which would allow as to ascribe, via comparisons with the established model, many other Leonardesque paintings with questionable attributions with more of certainty. And this is a work which has hardly been begun, since philology of the eye has sunk, in the 21st century, to a deplorable level, and since, a general trend since the 19th century, Leonardo scholars have never made much of the Leonardeschi. Not to the benefit of Leonardo studies. But rather to the opposite. I do not claim that the Hermitage painting is by Girolamo Figino, but I am raising the question. And perhaps an even more complex backstory, with workshop drawings of hands, and of cartoons, being passed from one generation to the other, might be the backstory behind my observations of today. From Salvator Mundi studies we may learn that similarity does not necessarily mean: immediate influence. Similarities might be the result of complex stories, barely having been revealed, because no-one has ever asked for these stories. But this we do, here and elsewhere.

Selected Literature:
Martin Kemp / Giuseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa. The People and the Painting, Oxford 2017;
Annalisa Perissa Torrini, Leonardo’s Followers in Lombardy: Girolamo and Giovan Ambrogio Figino, in: Constance Moffatt / Sara Taglialagamba (eds.), Illuminating Leonardo [Festschrift for Carlo Pedretti], Leiden/Boston 2016, pp. 183-197;
Martin Kemp, »Here’s Looking at You«: the Cartoon for the So-called Nude Mona Lisa, in: Moffatt / Taglialagamba 2016, pp. 151-168

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