John Berger. The art of seeing (№ 396437)

Looking at the "virgin of the rocks", the visitor of the National gallery (thanks to all that he heard and read about this picture) would feel about the following: "I stand in front of her. I can see it. This painting by Leonardo is not like any other painting in the world. The National gallery stored its original. If I'm diligent enough to look at her, you can sense its authenticity. "Madonna of the rocks" Leonardo da Vinci: it is authentic and therefore beautiful!"
To reject such feelings as naive would be wrong. They correspond to a complex view of specialists in the art, to which is written the catalogue of the National gallery. An article about "the virgin of the rocks" one of the longest in it. It is fourteen pages in small print. And not a word about the meaning of this picture. It tells about who ordered this picture, on the legal disputes about who she belonged to, about the probable date of its creation, the families of its owners. For this information there are years of researches, aimed to dispel the slightest doubt that this picture really painted by Leonardo. The second goal is to prove that is almost identical to the picture stored in the Louvre is a copy that hangs in the National gallery.
French art historians try to prove the opposite.