Madonna and Child with the Young St John the Baptist
Alessandro Bonvicino da Brescia, called Moretto (1498–1554)
c. 1550
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In the sixteenth century, the rule of the Venetian republic was by no means confined to the city of Venice and its immediate environs. In consequence, the local schools of painting of such cities as Brescia and Bergamo, which are geographically much closer to Milan, were under the sway of the Venetian school of painting. This should not be taken as implying that their productions were either slavishly dependent upon the metropolis or second-rate. On the contrary, artists such as Moretto – and indeed Girolamo Romanino and Giovanni Battista Moroni – were more than a match for all but the very greatest Venetian painters of the age.
Moretto was a remarkably insightful portraitist, but for the rest, his production was almost exclusively given over to religious subjects, whether in the form of monumental altarpieces or – as here – small-scale devotional works intended for private contemplation. The present panel, whose asymmetrical composition is directly inspired – albeit in reverse – by an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael known as the ‘Madonna with the Long Thigh’, shows the young Baptist paying homage to his cousin, Jesus. It takes an entirely conventional subject, but embellishes it with a number of strikingly original features. The most obvious novelty is the fact that the cross he is presenting is adorned with a wreath and spiralling garlands, both of laurel, and that there is a celestial radiance with another laurel wreath in the top right-hand corner of the composition. With his left hand the Baptist is pointing out the related text of the marble tablet he is propping up, which reads ‘HIS / ARMIS / VICTOR / DE OR / BE TRI /VMPHA / BIS’. Most remarkable of all, however, is the inscription on the architectural fragment in the foreground, which reads ‘O QVAM TE MEMOREM VIRGO NAMQZ HAVD TIBI PARTVS / MORTALIS GREMIO ES QVEM AMPLECTERIS O DEA CERTE’ (‘I have not seen or heard any of your sisters, O Virgin – or how should I name you? Since your looks are not mortal’), and is an adapted quotation from Virgil (‘Aeneid’, Book 1, lines 327, 328), with the result that the original’s reference to Venus is here applied to Mary. It is true that, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the prophesy of a virgin birth and a new golden age in his fourth Eclogue meant Virgil enjoyed a privileged status among pagans (hence his role as Dante’s guide in the ‘Divine Comedy’), but such a classical reference is virtually unique in renaissance religious art.
- Material/technique
- oil on panel
- Measurements
- 38 × 51 cm
- Acquisition
- acquired in 1895 by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein
- Currently exhibited
- Garden Palace, permanent presentation
- Artists/makers/authors
- Alessandro Bonvicino da Brescia, called Moretto
- Inventory number
- GE 879
- Signature/inscriptions content only available in German
- Siegel: rückseitig braunes Siegel mit Doppeladler und Initialen F.I. umlaufender Text: C.R. ACCADEMIA DI MILANO PER L'ESPORTAZIONE
- Provenance
- 1817 Antonio Scarpa Collection, Pavia; 1833 Pinacoteca Scarpa, Motta di Livenza; acquired in 1817 by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein at the auction of the Scarpa Collection, Milan
- Iconography
- Mary with child (Madonna) , John the Baptist
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