# St Anne with the Virgin and the Child Embracing a Lamb [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MELZI, Francesco]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on panel, 99 x 72 cm ## Commentary This painting is a fairly faithful copy of <A onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/l/leonardo/04/4stanne.html'\)" HREF="/html/l/leonardo/04/4stanne.html">Leonardo's The Virgin and Child with St Anne</A> in the Louvre. The picture in Florence differs from Leonardo's in the landscape, which is entirely reformulated here, and a few, yet significant, details, such as the foreground in which an alluvial riverbank is replaced by a sumptuous meadow. A possible explanation of the differences could be that the painter of the Florence version used as model not Leonardo's painting but his cartoon \(now lost\) which probably showed only the figures without Leonardo's final alterations, and no landscape at all. Traditionally the painting is attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, called Salai, Leonardo's rakish and ill-reputed pupil. However, on basis of stylistic similarities with Melzi's signed <A onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/m/melzi/pomona.html'\)" HREF="/html/m/melzi/pomona.html">Vertumnus and Pomona,</A> it is now attributed to Francesco Melzi. ## Related artworks - [Five Grotesque Heads]() - [Flora]() - [Flora]() - [Pomona and Vertumnus]() - [Portrait of Leonardo]() - [Seven caricatures]() - [Two Grotesque Heads]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()