Review

What the Ermine Saw. The Dark History Behind Lady with an Ermine

Alexandra Kiely 6 September 2022 min Read

What the Ermine Saw: The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth (Doubleday, May 24, 2022) tells the story of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Lady with an Ermine. This book is the latest in a popular genre of famous artwork biographies.

Lady with an Ermine and Its Long Life

what the ermine saw: Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine, 1489, Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, Poland.

Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine, 1489, Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, Poland.

Lady with an Ermine has a varied and dark history. Leonardo created it amidst the disturbing gender politics of late 15th century Italy. Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan commissioned the portrait to commemorate his young mistress Cecilia Gallerani.

Then, the painting fell off the record for about 250 years until the princely Czartoryski family of Poland acquired it around 1800. Despite being stolen and relocated by the Nazis, Lady with an Ermine remains in the Czartoryski collection today. Now the Princes Czartoryski Museum is a branch of the National Museum of Krakow.

During the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the painting traveled around the world as a sort of unofficial Polish ambassador. It certainly has a dramatic history, but not an unusual one for a famous work of art. The four major periods in the painting’s life – its creation, acquisition by the Czartoryski family, World War II, and the decades since – each get their own section of the book.

A Wandering Narrative

what the ermine saw: Book cover of What the Ermine Saw. The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth, 2022. Doubleday.

Book cover of What the Ermine Saw. The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth, 2022. Doubleday.

Despite its long life, Lady with an Ermine often fades to the background of its own biography. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the 250-year gap in the painting’s provenance and the very short list of owners since then. Just stating the facts of the painting’s movements wouldn’t make for much of a story.

Accordingly, Collinsworth’s text goes off on long tangents about things like the career of Ludovico Szfora’s sister-in-law Isabelle d’Este and the convoluted love life of one-time portrait owner Izabela Czartoryska (the latter required a flow chart of lovers to properly explain.) I found the section about Czartoryska, her son Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, and their fight for Polish independence to be wonderful. The chapters dedicated to the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II are, of course, far less cheerful.

It seemed to me that Collinsworth struggled to fill out the book, which is understandable. No matter how complex a painting’s history is, it rarely fills a full-length book all by itself. That’s why most authors go into other details about key players, contemporaneous events, relevant ideas, etc. Some of this enhances the main narrative, while other sections are probably more accurately characterized as informative intermissions.

What the Ermine Saw spends much more time on side stories than it does on material directly related to the painting itself. For example, it barely addresses the later life of the portrait’s subject Cecilia Gallerani, despite indicating that she continued to enjoy prominence. It seems that the portrait itself did not interest the author as much as the tangential happenings around it. Perhaps this fits the meaning of the title; the book isn’t about what happened to the ermine, but rather what happened in the ermine’s vicinity (what it would have seen).

what the ermine saw: Eden Collinsworth. Author’s website.

Eden Collinsworth. Author’s website.

Treating Leonardo with Moderation

I appreciate how successfully Collinsworth resisted the temptation to mythologize Leonardo. In much of the literature about him, authors get caught up in the popular aura surrounding this legendary artist to a frustrating degree. These works can resemble particularly fanciful saints’ lives more than nonfiction history books.

By contrast, this book certainly talks about Leonardo, but he doesn’t take up any more time and focus than he needs to as the creator of the portrait. In fact, I feel that the narrative could have talked a little more about how Leonardo’s worldwide fame impacted Lady with an Ermine. The book takes the painting’s celebrity for granted but does not much explore it. I got the impression that not many people have had the chance to see the portrait until the past few decades, so how did it become so famous?

The Verdict

I enjoyed What the Ermine Saw, but not as much as other such artwork biographies I’ve previously read. The painting’s story does not get the book’s main focus, but there’s plenty of other drama to go around. Yet be warned; not all of it makes for relaxing reading.

What the Ermine Saw. The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth was released by Doubleday on May 24, 2022. You can order it as a physical book, e-book, and audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, and more.

Recommended

Review

Vitamin C+: The Art of Collage in Phaidon’s New Book 

Phaidon’s Vitamin C+ Collage in Contemporary Art is the latest addition in the Vitamin series and will introduce you to everything you need to know...

Carlotta Mazzoli 22 May 2023

Susie M. Barstow, Mountain Lake in Autumn, 1873, private collection via Thomas Cole National Historic Site Review

Susie Barstow’s First-Ever Biography: This Is Her Moment

During her lifetime, the American landscape artist Susie Barstow (1836-1923) was nationally renowned and commercially successful. So why don’t...

Emily Snow 11 May 2023

Review

Phaidon’s Vitamin T: A Complete Guide to Textile Art

Gathering the work of over 100 artists, Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art is the most comprehensive survey of artists currently...

Carlotta Mazzoli 13 April 2023

See What You're Missing cover Review

Book Review: See What You’re Missing

See What You’re Missing: New Ways of Looking at the World Through Art, a new book by UK art expert and former Tate director Will Gompertz,...

Alexandra Kiely 20 April 2023