{"id":144801,"date":"2022-08-10T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T14:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=144801"},"modified":"2022-06-22T15:41:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T19:41:14","slug":"michelle-recommends-what-the-ermine-saw-the-extraordinary-journey-of-leonardo-da-vincis-most-mysterious-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=144801","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Recommends: What the Ermine Saw: The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“Five hundred and thirty years ago, a young woman sat before a Grecian-nosed artist known as Leonardo da Vinci. Her name was Cecilia Gallerani, and she was the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. Sforza was a brutal and clever man who was mindful that Leonardo\u2019s genius would not only capture Cecilia\u2019s beguiling beauty but also reflect the grandeur of his title. But when the portrait was finished, Leonardo\u2019s brush strokes had conveyed something deeper by revealing the essence of Cecilia\u2019s soul. Even today, The Woman with an Ermine<\/span> manages to astonish.<\/p>\n

Despite the work’s importance in its own time, no records of it have been found for the two hundred and fifty years that followed Gallerani\u2019s death. Readers of The Hare with the Amber Eyes<\/span><\/em><\/a> will marvel at Eden Collinsworth\u2019s dexterous story that illuminates the eventual history of this unique masterpiece, as it journeyed from one owner to the next\u2013from the portrait\u2019s next recorded owner, a Polish noblewoman, who counted Benjamin Franklin as an admirer, to its exile in Paris during the Polish Soviet War, to its return to WWII-era Poland where\u2014in advance of Germany\u2019s invasion\u2014it remained hidden behind a bricked-up wall by a housekeeper who defied Hitler\u2019s edict that it be confiscated as one of the Reich\u2019s treasures. Fans of Anne-Marie O\u2019Connor\u2019s The Lady in Gold<\/span><\/em><\/a> will treasure the story of this criss-crossing journey and the enigmatic woman at its heart.”<\/p>\n

Request a copy of What the Ermine Saw<\/em> today!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Five hundred and thirty years ago, a young woman sat before a Grecian-nosed artist known as Leonardo da Vinci. Her name was Cecilia Gallerani, and she was the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. Sforza was a brutal and clever man who was mindful that Leonardo\u2019s genius would not only capture Cecilia\u2019s beguiling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":144802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-michelle-recommends","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/What-the-Ermine-Saw.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6V6sR-BFv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144801"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144805,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144801\/revisions\/144805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/144802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}