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Lot Essay
This fascinating Madonna and Child has attracted the attention of scholars of Paduan art since 1889 when it was first published as a work by Giorgio Schiavone, a view followed by Berenson in 1907. The Child is placed on a tasseled cushion that sits on a delicately colored pink marble parapet. The Child is almost sculptural in its modeling, a feature somewhat at odds with the high-gothic tooling of the gold and pattern of the trees, that recall the kind of background devices employed by the Venetian, Antonio Vivarini.
This panel is of interest for the light that it casts on the practice of Squarcione and, in particular, the influence on him and on Paduan art in general, of Filippo Lippi who visited Padua in 1434.
Francesco Squarcione is a controversial figure, much praised by his Paduan biographer, Scardeone, and Vasari. Both described him as an educator and humanist who taught Mantegna, Crivelli and numerous other artists. Called the 'father of painters,' and 'the most singular and outstanding teacher of all painters of his time,' Squarcione was by origin the son of a notary but was trained as a tailor. He seems to have taken up painting relatively late in life, his first recorded commission coming in 1426 when he was 31. Documents paint a picture of relatively modest tasks - the decorating of a tabernacle door (1433) and the floor before an altar (1449) - but he was regarded highly enough to be received by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III, in 1453.
There are only two paintings that are securely attributed to Francesco, one a signed Madonna and Child (fig. 1; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), the other an altarpiece (Museo Civico, Padua) commissioned by Leone Lazzaro in 1449. Other later works are documented, but none of them may be identified with this panel. The two secure paintings are curiously different in style and conception. The Lazzaro altarpiece is Gothic in character, a formal polyptych whose elegant and imaginative conception is undermined by its relatively weak execution. It seems to follow ideas that were being developed by Vivarini in Venice, where Squarcione was a regular visitor in the 1440s. The Berlin Madonna and Child, on the other hand, is more competently painted. The spacial device of the protruding ledge, the decorative swags, the delicate profile of the Virgin, and the Child's pose suggest an awareness of innovations being made by Tuscan artists, two of whom, Donatello and Filippo Lippi, stayed in Padua and were known by Squarcione.
This painting, though differing from the Berlin Madonna and Child in the pose of the Madonna and devoid of such references to antiquity as the swags and candlestick, shares with it an unmistakeable awareness of Lippi. This panel derives from a cartoon which was also the basis for a painting in the Walters Collection, Baltimore (fig. 2) and scholars (Fiocco, Zeri, Rowlands and Ruda among others) have proposed that both follow a lost composition painted by Fra Filippo in Padua in 1434. Although the gesture of the Child sucking his finger ultimately derives from Masaccio, the conduit must have been Lippi. Many features - the articulation of the child's limbs, the drawing of his ears, the delineation of the drapery folds, the facial type and the interest in pictorial space - point to Fra Filippo, and if the actual prototype seen by Squarcione is lost to us, paintings such as the Tarquinia Madonna and Child (fig. 3) endorse the connection.
Squarcione's fame, even in his own day, rested primarily on his role as a teacher. Whatever his faults, and his mercenary exploitation of his most talented pupils was one of them, he clearly established a 'house style' that makes works by the Paduan school in the mid-fifteenth century immediately recognizable. His most famous student was Andrea Mantegna, but he also trained other important painters, among them Giorgio Schiavone, Marco Zoppo and Carlo Crivelli.
Because so few paintings can be securely attributed to Squarcione himself, and perhaps because of the quality of this panel, scholars have been unwilling to attribute this - or the Baltimore picture - to Francesco himself. Boskovits has suggested that it might be by a student, Nicola Pizzolo, who worked with Mantegna painting frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel (fig. 4; Chiesa degli Eremitani, Padua) between 1448 and 1453. Without doubt the plasticity of the Christ Child here stands comparison with the sculpturally conceived angels in the God the Father pendentive fresco, as Boskovits points out. Alternatively, A. de Marchi is inclined to attribute both paintings to Squarcione himself. An attribution to Squarcione and a dating to circa 1440 is also endorsed by Keith Christiansen.
This panel is of interest for the light that it casts on the practice of Squarcione and, in particular, the influence on him and on Paduan art in general, of Filippo Lippi who visited Padua in 1434.
Francesco Squarcione is a controversial figure, much praised by his Paduan biographer, Scardeone, and Vasari. Both described him as an educator and humanist who taught Mantegna, Crivelli and numerous other artists. Called the 'father of painters,' and 'the most singular and outstanding teacher of all painters of his time,' Squarcione was by origin the son of a notary but was trained as a tailor. He seems to have taken up painting relatively late in life, his first recorded commission coming in 1426 when he was 31. Documents paint a picture of relatively modest tasks - the decorating of a tabernacle door (1433) and the floor before an altar (1449) - but he was regarded highly enough to be received by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III, in 1453.
There are only two paintings that are securely attributed to Francesco, one a signed Madonna and Child (fig. 1; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), the other an altarpiece (Museo Civico, Padua) commissioned by Leone Lazzaro in 1449. Other later works are documented, but none of them may be identified with this panel. The two secure paintings are curiously different in style and conception. The Lazzaro altarpiece is Gothic in character, a formal polyptych whose elegant and imaginative conception is undermined by its relatively weak execution. It seems to follow ideas that were being developed by Vivarini in Venice, where Squarcione was a regular visitor in the 1440s. The Berlin Madonna and Child, on the other hand, is more competently painted. The spacial device of the protruding ledge, the decorative swags, the delicate profile of the Virgin, and the Child's pose suggest an awareness of innovations being made by Tuscan artists, two of whom, Donatello and Filippo Lippi, stayed in Padua and were known by Squarcione.
This painting, though differing from the Berlin Madonna and Child in the pose of the Madonna and devoid of such references to antiquity as the swags and candlestick, shares with it an unmistakeable awareness of Lippi. This panel derives from a cartoon which was also the basis for a painting in the Walters Collection, Baltimore (fig. 2) and scholars (Fiocco, Zeri, Rowlands and Ruda among others) have proposed that both follow a lost composition painted by Fra Filippo in Padua in 1434. Although the gesture of the Child sucking his finger ultimately derives from Masaccio, the conduit must have been Lippi. Many features - the articulation of the child's limbs, the drawing of his ears, the delineation of the drapery folds, the facial type and the interest in pictorial space - point to Fra Filippo, and if the actual prototype seen by Squarcione is lost to us, paintings such as the Tarquinia Madonna and Child (fig. 3) endorse the connection.
Squarcione's fame, even in his own day, rested primarily on his role as a teacher. Whatever his faults, and his mercenary exploitation of his most talented pupils was one of them, he clearly established a 'house style' that makes works by the Paduan school in the mid-fifteenth century immediately recognizable. His most famous student was Andrea Mantegna, but he also trained other important painters, among them Giorgio Schiavone, Marco Zoppo and Carlo Crivelli.
Because so few paintings can be securely attributed to Squarcione himself, and perhaps because of the quality of this panel, scholars have been unwilling to attribute this - or the Baltimore picture - to Francesco himself. Boskovits has suggested that it might be by a student, Nicola Pizzolo, who worked with Mantegna painting frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel (fig. 4; Chiesa degli Eremitani, Padua) between 1448 and 1453. Without doubt the plasticity of the Christ Child here stands comparison with the sculpturally conceived angels in the God the Father pendentive fresco, as Boskovits points out. Alternatively, A. de Marchi is inclined to attribute both paintings to Squarcione himself. An attribution to Squarcione and a dating to circa 1440 is also endorsed by Keith Christiansen.