«Lady with an Ermine (1)»

Leonardo da Vinci painted Lady with an Ermine around 1489 to 1491. The sitter is usually identified as Cecilia Gallerani, and the portrait hangs in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. She turns her head to look at something outside the frame. That is the starting point of this Lady with an Ermine pop art painting.

Her face is still there, but it has been cut up. A black bar runs across her forehead, a strip over her mouth has slid out of line, and a short black dash sits beside her nose. Chinese characters are printed on her cheeks, and a slice with one eye floats off to the left. A Chinese 100 banknote replaces her neck and chest, with her black bead necklace hanging over it. The ermine is built from thick white paint that drips down over her hand, which wears a chunky steel wristwatch. The blue sleeve carries a black badge with a compass rose, and near the bottom there is a dense black-and-white drawing of buildings and a pen nib. It all sits on a black ground with scratched, raised lines, with loose colour blocks and pixel squares at the left and bottom.

Artists have mixed faces and money for ages. In 1972 Andy Warhol made his portraits of Mao, and in 1930 Piet Mondrian painted Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, which is where my coloured rectangles come from.

I painted this one in 2022. I like that she keeps looking calmly sideways while a watch, a banknote and a brand badge are stuck onto her. As a Lady with an Ermine pop art painting it is contemporary pop art with a Renaissance face, and the raised texture gives it a mixed media wall art feel up close. It suits art for office walls.

This original is still available and ready to ship. Most of my other originals are already in private collections, and I paint new ones to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of this work also exists, and you can order it through Instagram or email.