The appearance of the _Madonna of the Rocks_ is singular, mysterious, and charming. A kind of basaltic grotto shelters the divine group placed on the bank of a spring which shows the stones of its bed through its limpid waters. Through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to set off the figures.
What an adorable type is the Madonna! It is quite peculiar to Leonardo, and does not in the least recall the virgins of Perugino nor those of Raphael: the upper part of the head is spherical, the forehead well developed; the oval of the cheeks sweeps down to a delicately curved chin; the eyes with lowered lids are circled with shadow; the nose, although fine, is not in a straight line with the forehead, like those of the Greek statues; the nostrils seem to quiver as if palpitating with respiration. The mouth, rather large, has that vague, enigmatical and delicious smile which da Vinci gives to all the faces of his women; faint malice mingles there with the expression of purity and kindness. The hair, long, fine, and silky, falls in waving locks upon cheeks bathed in shadows and half-tints, framing them with incomparable grace.
It is Lombard beauty idealized with an admirable execution whose only fault is perhaps too absolute a perfection.
And what hands! especially the one stretched out with the fingers foreshortened. M. Ingres alone has succeeded in repeating this _tour de force_ in his figure of _La Musique couronnant Cherubini_. The arrangement of the draperies is of that exquisite and precious taste that characterizes da Vinci. An agrafe in the form of a medallion fastens on the breast the ends of a mantle lifted up by the arms which thus produce folds full of nobility and elegance.
The angel who is pointing out the Infant Jesus to the little Saint John has the sweetest, the finest, and the proudest head that brush ever fixed upon canvas. He belongs, if we may so express it, to the highest celestial aristocracy. One might say he was a page of high birth accustomed to place his foot on the steps of a throne.