detail: lower right hand corner
This is the self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, age 24, from his Adoration of the Magi – 1475.
Leonardo never finished this painting. He shows himself here (on the right side of the adoration) in the classic convention of the day, inviting the viewer into his painting.
One of my favorite movies is ‘Legend’ starring a young Tom Cruise … or did the greatest engineer of the fifteenth-century invent time-travel? Leonardo Cruise? Tom da Vinci? Either way, both are great artists.
Do you think Leonardo resembles a young Tom?
Book one of my historical fantasy trilogy, Second Lisa, features Leonardo from his early childhood and apprenticeship years as a teenager, to age twenty-four when he painted this self-portrait. I premise he was big brother to his kid sister, Lisabetta, the real Mona Lisa.
Veronica Knox 