Louvre restores masterpiece by Leonardo's Andrea Solario. Will it be the Mona Lisa's turn next?

Important restoration at the Louvre: the work by one of Leonardo’s painters, Andrea Solario (Milan, c. 1470 - 1524), the Madonna and Child, also known as the Madonna of the Green Cushion , which now presents itself with its original colors, restored to everyone’s visibility thanks to a cleaning job that removed the patinas of time that had yellowed the work’s surface, is back on view to the public after restoration. A work that presented itself in a state similar to that of the Mona Lisa, produced in the same period, and which presents a surface similar to that with which Andrea Solario’s Madonna and Child also presented itself until a few weeks ago: is this therefore a prelude to some kind of operation on the world’s most famous work? At the moment it seems unlikely, but certainly the results of the operation on Solario’s work will not fail to cause discussion.

Solario tackles the theme of the Madonna lactans, the Virgin nursing the Child, one of the oldest and most revered in Christian iconography. The model is the Hermitage’s Madonna Litta, a composition probably conceived by Leonardo da Vinci and long attributed to him but painted by one of his pupils, possibly Marco d’Oggiono, in the early 1590s. The Virgin is presented almost in profile, and the child gestures in a contradictory twist between the lower and upper limbs. The artist places the protagonists, as per recurring iconography, in an interior with a window open to a landscape. Solario has chosen a paradoxical mise-en-scene that combines a marble parapet in the foreground, typical of an interior scene, with a landscape background that implies an exterior. We might find consistency in this composition by assuming that the Virgin stopped in front of an open window or in front of a marble block, perhaps remnants of an ancient ruin. The image could thus evoke the episode of the Holy Family’s resting during the flight into Egypt. Indeed, the man walking in front of a horseman in the background on the left is reminiscent of Joseph leading the Virgin and Child. But one should probably not look for too much narrative logic in this composition, which derives from a type that became conventional in the early 16th century. The pillow refers to sleep, an allusion to Jesus’ future death: its imposing proportions, which give the painting its name, are also reminiscent of the large pillows that support the remains of Christ in some mourners.

The figure of the Child, gesturing and grasping his foot with his right hand, has always fascinated admirers because of its naturalness. This spontaneous and familiar pose emphasizes the idea of God’s incarnation as a humble child, and invites meditation on Christ’s future crucifixion through the emphasis on the foot that will be nailed, just as the Virgin’s right hand caresses the side of the Child who will be wounded. Solario is not the inventor of this pose of the Child of which we know several examples from the second half of the fourteenth century, often in images of the Virgin nursing Jesus.

A work considered a masterpiece by Solario

The painting’s presence in France in the early 17th century convinced most critics that Solario painted it between 1507 and 1510, during the time he worked in France, or shortly before. However, the use of poplar, which was more common in Italy than in northern France, led several historians to assume a execution took place in Milan, either before or after France. The signature “Andreas de Solario fa” without reference to the artist’s Milanese origin that we find on other works, such as the Lamentation over the Dead Christ in the Louvre certainly painted in France, has convinced some that the painting was painted in Milan, following a logic whereby the painter would specify provenance only for works painted or intended for outside the city.

The Madonna of the Green Pillow has often been considered Andrea Solario’s masterpiece or at least his most famous work. The first sign of its success is the considerable number of copies and engravings: in 1987 David Alan Brown identified fifteen painted copies to which were added another twenty-nine copies listed in the workbook kept in the records of the Louvre’s paintings department. These copies, most often anonymous, date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and at least one version has the qualities of a workshop work, with an interesting variant, the Virgin and Child placed in an interior with St. Joseph sawing a board. There are also some fifteen engravings, the earliest of which, reversed and on a smooth ground, was published by Augustin Quesnel in 1636. Like the museum’s other masterpieces, the Madonna of the Green Pillow was often copied by young artists who loved the Italian Renaissance. This is evidenced by the sketches of Fleury Richard, Hippolyte Flandrin, and Edgar Degas. The exceptional number of reproductions testifies to the growing appreciation of the painting, which has been on display in the Louvre since 1798. The work, still on display today, was placed in the Salon Carrée in 1798, then moved to the Grande Galerie where it remains today. This status as a masterpiece was built up during the 19th century under the pen of art historians who praised its technical and stylistic qualities: the delicacy of the modeling, the precious execution or the brilliant color that gives the painting an enameled character, the beauty of the faces, and the grace and truth of the movements.

The restoration

The archives of the national museums and the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des musées de France (C2RMF, Center for Research and Restoration of French Museums) report at least three restorations in 1813, 1892, and 1940, as well as a dozen localized interventions and minor paint repairs 1945 and 1985. In 2024, the painting underwent new laboratory examinations with a view to its restoration because it was under thick layers of very yellowed varnish and had stains caused by old retouches applied in the past to repair small gaps. The interventions were carried out at C2RMF and the restoration was entrusted to Italian restorer Cinzia Pasquali, who came from the “school” of the Central Institute for Restoration.

The intervention consisted of a decisive brightening of the varnishes, the removal of repainting, and was completed by the retouching of rare losses. The state of preservation was on the whole very good, apart from micro-staining and wear on the blue of the Virgin’s mantle related to previous abrasive cleaning. The balance of the composition has thus been restored, particularly with the rediscovery of the perfectly preserved green foliage of the grove set behind the Virgin, which echoes the cushion on which Jesus rests and contrasts with the lacquer red of Mary’s robe and the blue of her cloak. The landscape has been freed of numerous additions of branches and leaves that weighed down and obscured the original layout, and the trees have regained their compact form. The complexions have regained their pink-tinged whiteness, the veil its bluish clarity. Freed from discordant repainting, the material has regained its smooth, molten appearance, a sculptural volume. We find the brilliance of color, the clarity of drawing, the simple, natural emotion, the tender movement of figures that have seduced generations of amateurs.

Louvre restores masterpiece by Leonardo's Andrea Solario. Will it be the Mona Lisa's turn next?

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