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Saint Peter Martha And Leonardo Essay

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The “Saints Peter, Martha, Mary Magdalen, and Leonard” (1515) by Correggio is a painting showing four Christian saints: Saint Peter, Martha, Mary Magdalen, and Leonard of Noblac. The downward gaze of Saint Peter and Martha are shown in contrast to the upward gaze of Mary Magdalen and Leonard. The painting shows a great deal of realism in the garments and anatomical forms of the four figures. In a similar way, “The Head of the Virgin” (1510–1513) by Leonardo Da Vinci shows the upward gaze of Mary in the highly realistic renaissance style. More so, Da Vinci‘s use of a smiling woman (also found in the Mona Lisa) is not unlike the smile of Mary Magdalen in Correggio’s saintly portrait. These two figural portraits of religious figures are defined by the similar portraiture style of the renaissance era that Da Vinci utilized as an influence on the work of Correggio. Da Vinci’s drawing emulates a very detailed an version of the Virgin Mary, which had a massive impact on …show more content…

The smile on Mary Magadalen’s face is not unlike the divine smile of the Virgin Mary in Da Vinci’s portrait drawing. Correggio’s figural realism in portraiture was known to be a response to Leonard Da Vinci: He knew the works of Leonardo” (Ekserdjian, 1997, p.16). In this capacity, the use of religious iconography was similar executed through the realism of portrait works, which Leonardo had pioneered in detailed drawings, such as the Head of the Virgin” in 1510. This type of analysis provides more background to the reason why Correggio decided to portray the saints (especially Mary Magdalen) in a very similar “divine” presentation. In this manner, the influence of Leonardo’s realism provided a humanistic way to portray religious icons with grater figural details and facial expressions in this type of renaissance

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