Word: ginevra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lost Leda and the Swan, he could depict sensuous nudes when he chose. But the drawing that survives of Leda's head shows a lady ethereal and detached. Surviving also are the austere and delicate silverpoint studies of hands, believed to have been made for the portrait of Ginevra dei Benci. The painting itself, in Washington's National Gallery, has been cut off just below the shoulders (though no one knows in which century the damage was done...
...Walker to make selections from them and to authenticate debated pictures. Walker became director himself in 1956; during his term, he almost doubled the gallery's holdings, acquiring 899 new paintings. His single greatest coup was the U.S.'s first Leonardo da Vinci, the $5,000,000 Ginevra del Bend...
...most pampered and mysterious ladies of the Italian Renaissance took up official residence in Washington last week. With a minimum of fanfare, Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra dei Bend (see color), acquired from the private collection of Prince Franz Josef II of Liechtenstein for more than $5,000,000 last month, went on display in solitary splendor in the National Gallery's "Lobby B," a small anteroom with a 28-ft. ceiling, limestone walls and a marble floor...
...National Gallery's courtly, erudite Director John Walker, 60, who has spent years negotiating for the painting, the present hoo-ha is simply proportionate to the prize. He has coveted Ginevra dei Bend ever since he was first shown the painting in the prince's collection by the late Bernard Berenson, in 1930. "After I became curator of the National Gallery," Walker recalls, "Berenson would say to me, 'I don't care what else you get as a curator, but before I die, I want you to get the Leonardo...
...understand Berenson's insist -ence when he observed the lady at length while it was on loan at London's Na tional Gallery between 1951 and 1953. "This picture," he explains, "has a mysterious way of growing on you the more often you see it. To me, Ginevra is utterly fascinating, more fascinating than the Mona Lisa, a miracle of psychological insight. Only once did Leonardo attempt to convey a mood of melancholy reserve, of disillusioned detachment. One feels, to quote Yeats, that Ginevra has 'cast a cold eye on life, on death.' " Concludes Walker: "Mona...