The Virgin of the Rocks

This is the second version of a painting Leonardo made twice — the first hangs in the Louvre.

Set in a strange, otherworldly grotto, it shows the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, the infant John the Baptist, and an angel, arranged in a gentle pyramid.

The landscape around them — rocky, cavernous, lit from an unseen source — feels like nowhere on Earth.

The technique is Leonardo's sfumato — a delicate blurring of outlines, as if the figures are emerging from shadow rather than simply painted against it.

No hard edges, no sharp lines.

It gives everything a quality closer to memory than to observation.

Look at the angel's hand, pointing towards the infant John the Baptist — in the Louvre version that gesture is more emphatic; here it is softened, almost uncertain.

Fun fact: the commission came from a religious confraternity in Milan in 1483.

A dispute over payment led Leonardo to keep the first version for himself and paint this second one in its place.

It arrived at the National Gallery in 1880.

Scholars still debate exactly how much of it Leonardo painted himself and how much came from his workshop.