She may not be as famous as the Mona Lisa — but she should be.
In fact, she should be even more famous, given the backstory behind it, and the history surrounding it.
I’m talking about Leonardo da Vinci’s The Lady with the Ermine, which was painted in1 490, around the time when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas — and about 17 years before La Gioconda, which he finished in 1507.
The masterpiece is housed at Krakow’s National Museum, and it is considered one of Poland’s most valuable and treasured pieces of art.
It is a painting of Cecelia Gallerani, a beautiful, intelligent and sophisticated young woman of 17 who came to the Court of Milan in the late 1400s. She played the lute, wrote poetry in Latin and Italian, and her poems caught the attention of contemporary writers. Due to her beauty inside and out, she captured the attention of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and she became his lover and mistress. At the time, however, the Duke was engaged to the daughter of the Duke of d’Estes. He kept putting off his impending marriage.
Leonard da Vinci was a painter at the Court of Milan in Italy from 1482-1499. His painting of The Lady with The Ermine is of major significance, primarily because it marks the beginning of the first psychological portrait, as it portrays her soul and her state of mind, according to art experts.
Until that time portraits had been mostly profiles, whereas The Lady depicts not only the sitter’s head but most of her torso as well. Furthermore, the sitter’s elegant body is frozen in dynamic motion. Her head looks right while her body faces left. The curator at the museum, Dorota Dec, say that that The Lady appears to be poised and stopped in her movement and her thoughts, with a hint of a smile on her lips. Some theorize that she is smiling at the Duke as he approaches her.
Also of significance is the small animal The Lady holds in her hands. It is said to be an ermine, but art historians say that the animal is not of a specific species, but instead, an emblematic heraldic significance of aristocracy. Here’s why: The Duke had been decorated by the King of Naples with the title of the Neapolitan Order of the Ermine, in 1488. The animal in the painting is restless and agitated, and da Vinci expertly captured the movement of muscles in its body. It is seen as a perfect depiction of the animal’s vitality, which was important for Renaissance art at the time.
Eventually, Cecelia Gallerani was married off to Ludovico Carminati, but only after she bore a son named Caesar to the Duke.
The painting disappeared for a few centuries, then reappeared in Poland in the early 1800s, where today you can view its significant beauty. Forget about going to the Louvre — and enduring and elbowing your way through the crowds wishing to see the Mona Lisa. When I visited the Krakow National Museum, only about 20 people were in line and we were able to zip through it and spend as much time as we wanted with The Lady. The painting is impossibly beautiful.
Yet another great reason to visit Poland, and I’ll get into more of that in future articles for Forbes.com.
