Corrado, CrispinFoster, LauraMurphy, Michaela2024-12-232024-12-232024Murphy, Michaela. "Acquiring Leonardo: American Cultural Politics and the Legacy of World War II". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2024.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/843Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Business and Creative Writing)--John Cabot University, Fall 2024.Leonardo da Vinci is famous for his genius and is historically recognized as the ultimate “Renaissance man.” His three known secular portraits are just as acknowledged, with the Mona Lisa, the Lady with an Ermine, and the Ginevra de’ Benci demonstrating a progression of his skill in his career. One portrait, however, stands out. The Ginevra de’ Benci is the sole Leonardo da Vinci in America, located at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. But how did she arrive there, and when? For the first time, this thesis examines the Ginevra de’ Benci in terms of her political significance in the United States. By analyzing sources from art history, museum studies, legal studies, and museum archives, this thesis endeavors to demonstrate the political tools used by the National Gallery of Art in the painting’s acquisition. It seeks to examine how the painting served as a tactic to build a national consciousness of art during the post-World War II era. It considers the ways America collected art at a significant pace in order to become a new capital of the art world. This analysis will focus on American intention and narrative, studying the ways in which a “national” gallery of America supported a political “savior” position on art after the devastating Second World War.vii, 71 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Ginevra de' Benci (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519)World War, 1939-1945Art and the warThesis