The Madonna of the Rocks, the engraving of which is so well known, belongs to and may be considered the type of Leonardo’s second manner.  The modelling is pursued with a care not found in those painters who are not familiar with the engraving chisel.  The roundness of the bodies obtained by gradation of tints, the exactness of the shadows and the parsimonious reserve in the light in this unparalleled picture betray the habits of a sculptor.  We know that Leonardo was one, and he often said:  “It is only in modelling that the painter can find the science of shadow.”  For a long time earthen figures which he made use of in his work were preserved.

The appearance of the Madonna of the Rocks is singular, mysterious, and charming.  A kind of basaltic grotto shelters the divine group placed on the bank of a spring which shows the stones of its bed through its limpid waters.  Through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to set off the figures.

What an adorable type is the Madonna!  It is quite peculiar to Leonardo, and does not in the least recall the virgins of Perugino nor those of Raphael:  the upper part of the head is spherical, the forehead well developed; the oval of the cheeks sweeps down to a delicately curved chin; the eyes with lowered lids are circled with shadow; the nose, although fine, is not in a straight line with the forehead, like those of the Greek statues; the nostrils seem to quiver as if palpitating with respiration.  The mouth, rather large, has that vague, enigmatical and delicious smile which da Vinci gives to all the faces of his women; faint malice mingles there with the expression of purity and kindness.  The hair, long, fine, and silky, falls in waving locks upon cheeks bathed in shadows and half-tints, framing them with incomparable grace.

It is Lombard beauty idealized with an admirable execution whose only fault is perhaps too absolute a perfection.

And what hands! especially the one stretched out with the fingers foreshortened.  M. Ingres alone has succeeded in repeating this tour de force in his figure of La Musique couronnant Cherubini.  The arrangement of the draperies is of that exquisite and precious taste that characterizes da Vinci.  An agrafe in the form of a medallion fastens on the breast the ends of a mantle lifted up by the arms which thus produce folds full of nobility and elegance.

The angel who is pointing out the Infant Jesus to the little Saint John has the sweetest, the finest, and the proudest head that brush ever fixed upon canvas.  He belongs, if we may so express it, to the highest celestial aristocracy.  One might say he was a page of high birth accustomed to place his foot on the steps of a throne.