Page "Leonardo da Vinci" Paragraph 24

In the painting Virgin and Child with St. Anne the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes as " breathtakingly beautiful " and harkens back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle.

What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed.

Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne.

She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice.

This painting, which was copied many times, influenced Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto, and through them Pontormo and Correggio.

The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.