Ferreting out a true ermine

IN Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, a young woman holds a long, skinny animal in her arms. An ermine is a stoat in its white winter coat. Irish stoats don’t turn white but mainland European ones do.

This, the most famous painting in Poland, can be seen at the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, where it has a room all to itself, apart from an empty frame hanging on the opposite wall. The frame once held a self-portrait by Raphael that was looted by the Nazis, carried off to Germany, and never seen again. Placing the da Vinci close to the frame evokes a sombre feeling. It’s an inspired piece of picture hanging.

Cecilia Gallerani was about 17 when she sat for da Vinci. ‘Galay’, the Greek for ermine, may be a pun on her name. The mistress of Ludovico Szforza, da Vinci’s patron, she had borne him a son. Szforza’s adopted emblem was the ermine, a symbol of aristocratic pride and steadfast virtue. This animal, it was said, would rather die than have its beautiful white coat soiled. A drawing by da Vinci in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge celebrates the legend; it shows a hunter killing a stoat. The inference is clear; Gallerani holds the great, and noble, Szforza captive in her arms.

But there is an anxious feel to the picture. Gallerani’s body inclines to the right while her head faces left, echoing the serpentine posture of the animal she holds. Did da Vinci think women and weasels had similar temperaments? Perhaps not; his Mona Lisa is posed similarly. But Gallerani’s beautiful hand on the animal’s fur has a sensual quality and her neck seems dangerously close to the ermine’s mouth; forbidden pleasures have their dangers.

Although births outside wedlock were common in her society (the Borgia pope Alexander VI had at least four children), Gallerani’s situation was precarious and, indeed, Szforza went on to marry someone else. Da Vinci would have been all too aware of her vulnerability. He, too, was born outside wedlock and, like her’s, his career depended on the whims of the great Szforza.

But is the animal in the picture a stoat? There are stoats in the north of Italy but none as far south as Florence. They don’t make good pets so a tame one would not have been available as a prop. Da Vinci might have had one sent to him but that seems unlikely; cradling a stoat, even a tame one, is not for the fainthearted. These notoriously aggressive animals can deliver a nasty bite.

In any case, the creature in the picture is much too large to be a stoat. The nearest ones, in the Alps, would be about 20cm long. People were smaller in the past than they are today but Gallerani would have to be tiny for a stoat to look that big in her arms. The animal depicted is about the size of a polecat, a medium-sized member of the weasel family, found around Florence. There are no polecats in Ireland but the domestic version, the ferret, is well known. Ferrets have been kept for at least 2,500 years. They were not pets but working animals. Being long and thin, they were sent down rabbit holes to chase the hapless occupants out into nets. Ferrets, in da Vinci’s day, were widely used.

There is only one serious objection to Gallerani’s animal being a ferret; it, and its wild equivalent, the polecat, is notoriously smelly. The Latin name Mustela putorius translates as “the smelly weasel”. In England, the polecat was known as ‘the foul mart’, as opposed to the pine marten which was called ‘the sweet mart’; martens give off a pleasant odour.

So was this sophisticated lady persuaded to cradle a smelly ferret during the long sittings which da Vinci’s meticulous work would have required? Lady with a Ferret might be a more accurate, if less grand, title for the picture. Whatever its name, the portrait is as captivating in its way as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.