Madonna and Child Enthroned
Madonna and Child Enthroned
- Artist
- Altobello Melone
- Artist Dates
- 1490-1543
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Madonna and Child Enthroned
- Date
- 1516
- Medium
- oil on panel, transferred to masonite
- Dimensions
- 111.8 x 47.6 cm (44 x 18-3/4 in)
- K Number
- K1097
- Repository
- Museum of Art and Archaeology
- Accession Number
- 61.77
- Notes
Provenance
(Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955], Rome-Florence); sold to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955] on 16 June 1937; gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1941; deaccessioned in 1952 and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; gift to Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri, no. 61.76.
Catalogue Entry
Altobello Melone
Madonna and Child Enthroned
K1097
Columbia, Mo., University of Missouri, Study Collection (61.77), since 1961.(1) Transferred from wood to masonite. 44 X 18 3/4 in. (111.8 X 47.6 cm.). Good condition; faces slightly abraded. Formerly attributed to Romanino, K1097 has been recognized as the middle panel of a triptych by Melone of which the side panels, Tobias and the Angel on one and St. Helena on the other, are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.(2) The triptych is described as having been intact when it hung in the Galleria delle Torri de'Picenardi, Cremona, before 1869,(3) a collection from which the painting takes the designation, Triptych of the Picenardi, used in the considerable literature that has dealt with it in the last fifteen years. A small painting of the Finding of the True Cross, in the Museo Nazionale, Algiers, is the only panel that has thus far been associated with the triptych as part of its predella.(4) Here, and especially in K1097 and its two side panels, Melone reaches his closest approximation to Romanino; thus the date may be about 1520, a little later than Melone's dated frescoes (1517) in the Duomo at Cremona.
References
(1) F. R. Shapley, in Missouri Alumnus, May, 1961, pp. 3 f, as Melone. (2) According to M. Gregori (in Para gone, no. 69, 1955, p. 4), K1097 had been attributed, when in the Picenardi Collection, to Gian Francesco Bembo. In the 1930's it was attributed to Romanino by B. Berenson, G. Fiocco, R. Longhi, F. M. Perkins, W. E. Suida, and A. Venturi (in ms. opinions). L. Grassi (in Proporzioni, vol. III, 1950, pp. 153 ff. and n. 25), giving credit to Longhi for associating K1097 with the Oxford panels, published them as by Melone and identified them with the triptych described by F. Sacchi in 1872 (Notizie pittoriche cremonesi, 1872, p. 134) as 'La Vergine ed il Bambino in trono, nel mezzo, S. Elena e Tobia coll'Angelo, ai lati. Trittico dipinto in tavola ad olio; alto un metro e 12 centim., largo un metro e 42 centim. Questo dipinto, proveniente dalla Galleria delle Torri de'Picenardi, fu nel 1869 venduto ad un antiquario Inglese.' Sacchi thought the triptych to be by Melone (according to Gregori, loc. cit., above). Grassi's attribution to Melone has been followed by F. Zeri (in Paragone, no. 39, 1953, p. 43), M. Gregori (p. 4 and n. 24 of op. cit., above), and F. Bologna (in Burlington Magazine, vol. XCVII, 1955, pp. 242, 249), all dating the work around 1520 or shortly before. (3) See the quotation from Sacchi in note 2, above. (4) F. Zeri, loc. cit. in note 2, above.