What the Ermine Saw

- Blurb -

In the tradition of The Lady in Gold and The Hare with the Amber Eyes, the remarkable story behind one of history' s most enigmatic portraits. 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' s genius would not only capture Cecilia' s beguiling beauty but also reflect the grandeur of his title. But when the portrait was finished, Leonardo' s brush strokes had conveyed something deeper by revealing the essence of Cecilia' s soul. Even today, The Woman with an Ermine manages to astonish. 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' s death. Eden Collinsworth illuminates the eventual history of this unique masterpiece, as it journeyed from one owner to the next-from the portrait' s 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-in advance of Germany' s invasion-it remained hidden behind a bricked-up wall by a housekeeper who defied Hitler' s edict that it be confiscated as one of the Reich' s treasures. What the Ermine Saw is a fact-based story that cheats fiction and a reminder that genius, power, and beauty always have a price.