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Lot Essay
Signed and dated on the parapet in the lower left, this painting by Mariotto Albertinelli beautifully captures the intimacy of a tender moment shared between a mother and her child, while emanating the idealized nature and harmony that characterize the Florentine High Renaissance. The artist has successfully combined the soft rendering of the figures' flesh tones in sfumato with more detailed refinement, such as the golden curls of the Madonna’s hair, the transparency of the veil wrapped around the Christ's body, and the delicate fringe of the curtain behind.
The Madonna is here represented at three-quarter length holding the Christ Child, who is seated on her lower right arm, while with her other hand she gently caresses his shoulder. Tenderly, she inclines her face and eyes towards him. The infant Jesus fondly touches his mother’s neck and gazes intensely at her. This iconographical type, known as the Virgin of Tenderness, has its origin in the Byzantine icon of the Eleousa type. It found particular popularity in the midst of a strongly humanist Florence with both sculpted and painted examples, including Donatello’s Pazzi Madonna (circa 1420-30, Bode-Museum, Berlin) and Raphael’s Tempi Madonna (1508, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Albertinelli reuses the pose of this Madonna for his Madonna at the Seminario Arcivescovile, Venice, which Ludovico Borgo dates after 1513 (L. Borgo, ‘Mariotto Albertinelli’s Smaller Paintings After 1515’, The Burlington Magazine, May 1974, p. 249, fig. 16.).
Painted in 1509, when Albertinelli and Fra Bartolommeo shared a joint studio, the so-called ‘Bottega di San Marco’, this Madonna and Child demonstrates the cooperative nature of their practice. The detailed rendering of the curtain has parallels in an Annunciation (Fig. 1, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva), a collaborative painting by both artists dating to 1511. Additionally, the present painting may relate to two drawings by Fra Bartolommeo, one depicting the Virgin with the Infant Christ behind a drapery (C. Fischer, op. cit., 1994, p. 81, no. 47), and another showing a landscape with the northeast building of the convent of Santa Maria del Sasso near Bibbiena (inv. no. ALB 61.203, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, C. Fischer, op. cit., 1989, p. 328).
Until the restoration of this painting in 1998, an infant Saint John the Baptist was present in the lower right corner. This figure being painted over the Madonna's mantel and stylistics infelicities led Antonio Morassi to view it as a later addition (A. Morassi, op. cit., 1946, p. 73). By contrast, Ludovico Borgo posited that the figure of John the Baptist was original to the picture since the artist often represented the infant Saint John in other Madonnas, such as the Harewood Madonna also dated 1509 (L. Borgo, op. cit., 1976, pp. 153-154, pp. 326-328, no. 21). Restoration revealed the Madonna's mantel fully intact below the figure of the infant Baptist, lending credence to Morassi’s view.
The Madonna is here represented at three-quarter length holding the Christ Child, who is seated on her lower right arm, while with her other hand she gently caresses his shoulder. Tenderly, she inclines her face and eyes towards him. The infant Jesus fondly touches his mother’s neck and gazes intensely at her. This iconographical type, known as the Virgin of Tenderness, has its origin in the Byzantine icon of the Eleousa type. It found particular popularity in the midst of a strongly humanist Florence with both sculpted and painted examples, including Donatello’s Pazzi Madonna (circa 1420-30, Bode-Museum, Berlin) and Raphael’s Tempi Madonna (1508, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Albertinelli reuses the pose of this Madonna for his Madonna at the Seminario Arcivescovile, Venice, which Ludovico Borgo dates after 1513 (L. Borgo, ‘Mariotto Albertinelli’s Smaller Paintings After 1515’, The Burlington Magazine, May 1974, p. 249, fig. 16.).
Painted in 1509, when Albertinelli and Fra Bartolommeo shared a joint studio, the so-called ‘Bottega di San Marco’, this Madonna and Child demonstrates the cooperative nature of their practice. The detailed rendering of the curtain has parallels in an Annunciation (Fig. 1, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva), a collaborative painting by both artists dating to 1511. Additionally, the present painting may relate to two drawings by Fra Bartolommeo, one depicting the Virgin with the Infant Christ behind a drapery (C. Fischer, op. cit., 1994, p. 81, no. 47), and another showing a landscape with the northeast building of the convent of Santa Maria del Sasso near Bibbiena (inv. no. ALB 61.203, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, C. Fischer, op. cit., 1989, p. 328).
Until the restoration of this painting in 1998, an infant Saint John the Baptist was present in the lower right corner. This figure being painted over the Madonna's mantel and stylistics infelicities led Antonio Morassi to view it as a later addition (A. Morassi, op. cit., 1946, p. 73). By contrast, Ludovico Borgo posited that the figure of John the Baptist was original to the picture since the artist often represented the infant Saint John in other Madonnas, such as the Harewood Madonna also dated 1509 (L. Borgo, op. cit., 1976, pp. 153-154, pp. 326-328, no. 21). Restoration revealed the Madonna's mantel fully intact below the figure of the infant Baptist, lending credence to Morassi’s view.