1452 -1519 · Florence, Milan and France, gesture and sfumato

Leonardo da Vinci transforms the religious scene into an investigation into human relationships: a look, a hand or a distance are enough to give rise to the mystery.

In Leonardo's religious works, doctrine becomes a network of gestures. The Virgin, the Child Jesus and Saint Anne interweave three generations in a movement that is both affectionate and premonitory. The Virgin of the Rocks installs Mary, Christ, John the Baptist and the angel in a cave where nature seems prior to human time. Saint Jerome in the desert exposes an ascetic body whose incompleteness reinforces tension. In Milan, The Last Supper captures the moment when the announcement of betrayal crosses the apostles like a wave. The sfumato not only softens the contours: it makes uncertainty a condition of the gaze. The sfumato not only softens the contours: it makes uncertainty a condition of the gaze. The selection "Religious works of Leonardo da Vinci" puts particularly in relation to 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 of the Rocks. His reading favors the story.

Leonardo places the mystery between the figures: in the space of one hand to another, in a word that spreads, in a smile that the light never closes.