Around 1475 -1519 · Incarnation, nature and inner movement

Leonardo inscribes Christ in gestures, looks and landscapes where theology becomes a sensitive experience of the living.

In Leonardo da Vinci, the figure of Christ crosses the entire career, from the Madonnas of youth to Saint Anne and the Last Supper. The Child is never a simple religious attribute: he grabs a flower, blesses Saint John, plays with a lamb or turns away from his mother, each gesture announcing both the Incarnation and the Passion. In The Virgin of the Rocks, the sacred group is organized by a silent exchange of hands and glances, in the heart of a mineral and humid nature rendered by atmospheric perspective. Saint Anne pushes this continuity of bodies, feelings and landscape even further. The sfumato erases the boundaries of the outline to circulate the life of one figure to the other. Even when the subject is doctrinal, Leonardo therefore treats it as research on movement, emotion and the laws of nature. The selection "Jesus Christ in Leonardo da Vinci" notably compares the Virgin, the Child Jesus and Saint Anne, known as Saint Anne and the Virgin, the Child Jesus, Saint John the Baptist and an angel, known as The Virgin with the rocks. His reading favors movement.

In Leonardo, Christ appears less through an isolated sign than through the living network of gestures, looks and landscape.