The interview with Vincent Delieuvin below has been edited for brevity and clarity. This subject, this composition, “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” is really very symbolic. Leonardo da Vinci spent nearly 20 years conceiving it. From 1500 to his death in 1519, he never stopped perfecting every detail, and transforming his ideas. For him, every part of the painting was fundamental, because he really wanted to portray something very particular—the very moment when the Virgin agreed to let Jesus go to his destiny. It is something very subtle that reveals it: a movement, one could say, between the moment Christ returns to the arms of the Virgin, and the moment she lets him go toward his destiny. What is fundamental for Leonardo, is the expression of feelings, and especially a perfect correspondence between the movement of the body and the movement of the mind. Here, the three protagonists, …