Stolen Leonardo Painting Recovered

Scottish police have reported the recovery of Leonardo da Vinci's "Madonna of the Yarnwinder" (ca. 1501-07), stolen four years ago from Drumlanrig Castle.

According to a Scottish police spokesperson and BBC World News, Madonna of the Yarnwinder (ca. 1501-07), attributed to Italian High Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci (ca. 1452-1519), was recovered in a Glascow raid on October 4, 2007. The work was stolen over four years ago from the late Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries & Galloway, southern Scotland by two thieves posing as tourists. They subdued a female staff member and sped off with the painting in a car found abandoned three miles from the crime scene. Four men have been arrested in connection with the theft. The painting is worth an estimated £15m.

Madonna of the Yarnwinder or another version of the same subject (The Landsdowne Madonna, 1501-07) was painted for Florimond Robertet, a court official for France's King Louis XII (r. 1498-1515). In both compositions, the Virgin Mary gently gestures protectively with her right hand approaching the somewhat oversized Christ Child. Seated in his mother's voluminous lap, the Savior embraces and gazes intensely at a threadbare cruciform spindle or yarnwinder, a deliberate iconic or symbolic reference to his eventual passion and death. In the oil on wood panel (48.3 x 36.9 cm), the infant's left index finger points upward to heaven, a pose often reserved for Christ's older cousin, St. John the Baptist. Through infrared reflectography, pentimenti (small changes) in the two paintings' underdrawings indicate Leonardo's participation; both masterpieces were completed largely by his workshop's assistants. Jesus' head and the rocky foreground are widely regarded by modern scholars as the work of Leonardo's hand. His influence is evident in the sfumato or smoky effect of the Virgin's facial fleshtones, where the pigments are blended softly into each other and no sharp outlines or contours exist, the master's minute brushstrokes achieving a sense of hazy realism.