LUINI, Bernardino
(b. 1480, Luino, d. 1532, Milano)

Holy Family with the Infant St John

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Panel, 100 x 84 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Leonardo worked in Milan for about twenty years and decisively influenced the development of the Lombard School of painting. Apart from Boltraffio, Bernardino Luini, a native of the Lake Maggiore region, was the most significant and certainly the most prolific of his followers. Luini painted frescoes and altarpieces for the churches and monastic orders of Lombardy, continually repeating types and compositions created by Leonardo and making use of his master's technique of soft modelling by means of light and shade and his gentle, lyrical approach.

Luini's female figures are delicate and charming, witness the graceful Mary of the Prado picture, and there is a soft continuity of line. His colours are warm and richly tinted and the tender, oval faces, the finely drawn hands and the singular suppleness and rhythm of the movements lend a rare beauty and poetry to his works.




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