Milan-Cortina Artists: Leonardo and Titian

Two Italian cities host the 2026 Winter Olympics, Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, representing two distinct geographic and historical sides of Italy. Although 220 miles apart in Northern Italy, they are culturally and linguistically dissimilar. Both are proud homes to two renown Italian artists that have something in common: Leonardo da Vinci and Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian. One painted a sex worker, the other his patron’s mistress. Both occasionally used their fingers to paint and were exacting in their precision.

Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani), detail, c. 1490. Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, Wikimedia Commons, open access.

Cortina and Titian

Cortina in the South Tyrol is the most un-Italian region of Italy. Two hours north of Venice and bordering Austria, the Dolomites are dramatic limestone mountains with jagged peaks and sharp cliffs punctuated by deep valleys. Famous for world-class skiing, Cortina has hosted the Olympics twice.

During the Renaissance, Cortina was ruled by the Venetians, and later the Austrian Habsburgs. Cortina became part of Italy only after World War I. The South Tyrol was forced into Italianization by Mussolini. Their native language was Ladin, a neo-Latin language, along with German, which fascists suppressed in favor of Italian. Fascists subjugated their culture and language, even requiring German names be changed into Italian. Only in 1972 did the South Tyrol become an autonomous region of Italy and reclaim its culture and Ladin language. Today, Austrian-Tyrolean German is their first language and Italian is learned as a second language.

About fifteen miles from Cortona lies Pieve di Cadore, the birthplace of Tiziano Vecellio. His birthdate is uncertain but probably occurred around 1488. As a boy Titian heard Ladin, German, and Italian. His family operated sawmills in the densely forested mountains. As a youth he moved to Venice to apprentice with Giovanni Bellini as a painter.

Titian returned to Cadore often to visit family and manage the sawmills. He enjoyed a six decade-long career in Venice, although he was always considered an outsider, a non-native Venetian. The Habsburg family became his primary patron. He became Western Europe’s preeminent painter, specializing in oil on canvas. His gifts were many: depicting the softness of silk, the glisten of pearls, or the introspective gaze in a portrait. Titian mastered mythological, portrait, and sacred subjects.

Titian, Danaë, 1545-46, Naples Museum of Capodimonte, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. 

Best known today for mythological paintings featuring voluptuous women, in 1545 Titian traveled to Rome to present Cardinal Alessandro Farnese with a painting of Danaë. This was a well-known pagan myth, and no one depicted it better than Titian. She was the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, who imprisoned her in a tower to avoid fulfilling an oracle. If she were to give birth to a son, he would grow up and kill the king. This beautiful maiden was doomed to spend her life in a bronze tower. Jupiter had other plans. As a clever sky god, he transformed himself into a shower of golden rain dispersed from a cloud that entered through a crack in the tower. The cloud emitted a shower of gold onto Danaë, she became pregnant, gave birth to Perseus, and the prophecy was fulfilled when he murdered the king.

Titian modified the rain into golden coins, which Danaë receives with a sensuous gaze towards the cloud-like form of Jupiter. Her legs are suggestively parted as she reclines propped up on a bed cushion while silky white sheets reveal her body. X-rays of the painting show Titian made modifications, as he usually did. Her left arm was raised and bent behind her head, and the background had a window with a column and a maidservant kneeling. He eliminated the servant and replaced her with Cupid. Titian probably made these changes to customize the painting for the cardinal.

The Danaë remains a sublime example of Titian’s depiction of the female form. Titian conveys chromatic richness using limited hues of ochre, blue, white, and red. Texture, particularly of the sheets and her flesh, is suggested rather than precisely drawn with anatomical exactness or linear forms. The gold cloud and shower of coins catch the light against the dark background.

Cardinal Farnese was pleased with his painting. Titian painted the features of the cardinal’s lover, Angela, as Danaë. The cardinal was enamored with Angela. The cardinal’s sexual appetite was well-known in Rome, a fact that displeased his grandfather, Pope Paul III. Clergy was rarely celibate, and they often frequented houses of pleasure and engaged in carnal commerce. Pope Paul III had four children, and Cardinal Farnese had one. The Danaë was conceived in an effort for Titian to gain favor with the powerful Farnese family in Rome. Titian and his studio went on to paint other versions of Danaë for various ecclesiastical and ruler clients, including the Habsburg Philip II, King of Spain.

Milan and Leonardo

Milan, a Renaissance political and military powerhouse, lies in the modern-day province of Lombardy. Today, finance, fashion, opera, and industry dominate Milan’s culture and status. Because of its proximity to France, Milan had frequent conflicts with French kings, to the east with Venice, north with the Austrian Habsburgs, and to the south with Tuscany and the Medici. The Sforza family dynasty dominated the political landscape for one hundred years during the Renaissance.

Da Vinci spent twenty-five years in Milan working for the Sforza family, in 1481-99 and 1506-13. Initially, he traveled from Florence to Milan on a diplomatic mission, as the Medici were allied with the Sforza at the time. He billed himself to the Sforza as a military engineer, and also a pretty good painter. His military planning didn’t pan out, but while he worked in Milan, he painted the Last Supper (click here for more about this masterpiece), the Virgin of the Rocks, and portraits.

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, commissioned a portrait of his mistress, the seventeen-year-old Cecilia Gallerani. The Lady with an Ermine speaks to da Vinci’s inventiveness as a portrait painter. Painted in oil on wood panel, Leonardo changed portraiture forever with Cecilia and culminating with the Mona Lisa. What makes this a masterpiece is the artful and careful positioning of the figure and animal. Fifteenth-century portraits were usually profile only and head and shoulders—no looking at the viewer or turning towards the viewer. Portraits were motionless and impersonal.

Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani), c. 1490. Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

He positioned her to look at an unseen person, perhaps Lodovico, as she turns towards her left shoulder. Her arms, head, hands, body of the ermine and its head are all placed at slightly different angles. This creates a sense of naturalness and changes a static profile view to one of engagement. He was experimenting with techniques and finishes to create a blurry softness, called sfumato in Italian, or smokiness. With Cecilia’s portrait, Leonardo achieved a softening and blending of the forms first with his brush, then with his fingertips. He avoided harsh outlining, preferring a soft-focus approach.

Regarding the animal she caresses, there is debate about whether this is a ferret, marten, ermine, or other creature. White ermine was a sign of wealth, often used for lining or as trim in garments. Only upper-class women and men could afford to embellish clothing with a pelt of an ermine. Lodovico used ermines as one of his emblems. Greek derivative of ermine is galee, a wordplay on her last name, Gallerani.

Ermines, in the weasel family, were long associated with purity, fertility, childbirth, and therefore marriage. Was this seventeen-year-old pregnant at the time? She gave birth to a son, Cesare, about one year after sitting for this portrait. That same year, in 1491, Lodovico married Beatrice d’Este and banished Cecilia to an estate outside of Milan. Lodovico reluctantly married Beatrice, only to strengthen family ties between Milan and Ferrara. Lodovico and Cecilia continued their relationship for some time. Lodovico acknowledged Cesare as his son and provided for him. The portrait is documented in Cecilia’s possession during her lifetime, not Lodovico’s, which is quite unusual.

Technological examination of the portrait reveals Leonardo painted three versions. The first included only Cecilia without an animal. In the second he painted a skinny gray squirrel-like animal on her lap, positioned similarly to the final version. Lastly, he painted over the gray animal with white, also beefing up the animal’s size. The white fur contrasts with her red and blue garment and against the dark background, making Cecilia’s portrait one of a kind.

Milan and Cortina share few similarities, other than two artists that strove for perfection. They both could take eons to finish a painting, seemingly never satisfied with the result. Both modified their oil paintings with different poses and elements to achieve the desired result. Leonardo and Titian had that trait in common as well as finger-painting to blend and diffuse lines and colors. The subjects in both paintings speak to the power of rulers, be it ecclesiastical or family, and the subordinate women in their lives.

Sources

Niemela, Pekka, and Simo Orma. “Lady with an ‘Ermine.’” Source: Notes in the History of Art 35, no. 4 (2016), 302–10.

Quiviger, François. Leonardo da Vinci: Self, Art and Nature. Reaktion Books, 2019.

Zapperi, Roberto. “Alessandro Farnese, Giovanni della Casa and Titian’s Danae in Naples.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991), 159-71.