Portrait of a pale young woman with tight blonde curls against a dark juniper bush and a blue landscape.
Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’ Benci [obverse], c. 1474/1478NGA · open access

Renaissance portraits · NGA · Text

The painting with a back side.

Turn the panel over and there is a wreath of juniper, laurel and palm with a motto. Look closely at the front and you may find the artist’s fingerprint.

118 wordsText storyWritten from the museum’s record · reviewed by an editor

The detail

The bush behind her is juniper — ginepro in Italian — and her name is Ginevra. Leonardo put the pun in the picture. Look closely at the edge of her curls and the museum will point you to something else: the ridges of a fingerprint, pressed into the wet paint while he softened the outline with his hand.

The record

This is the only painting by Leonardo in the Americas. It is also two paintings: on the back is a wreath of laurel, palm and juniper around a scroll that reads Virtutem forma decorat — beauty adorns virtue. The panel was cut down at some point below the picture we see; what was lost, the gallery does not say.

The line to keep

A portrait you can turn over — and a painter who signed it with his thumb.

The idea that the missing lower part showed her hands is a common interpretation and is deliberately left out.