Madonna and Child with Saint John
Madonna and Child with Saint John
- Artist
- Follower of Michelangelo (Piero d'Argenta?)
- Artist Dates
- 1475 -1564
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Madonna and Child with Saint John
- Date
- c. 1505
- Medium
- oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 69.9 x 48.6 cm (27-1/2 x 19-1/8 in)
- K Number
- K1569
- Repository
- Kress Foundation
- Notes
Provenance
Private Collection, London. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955] Rome-Florence); sold to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 11 July 1948.
Catalogue Entry
Follower of Michelangelo (Piero d'Argenta?)
Madonna and Child with Saint John
K1569
New York, N.Y., Samuel H. Kress Foundation, since 1963. Wood. 27 1/2 x 19 1/8 in. (69.9 x 48.6 cm.). Very much abraded, especially in flesh color and landscape. Among a group of half a dozen paintings with which K1569 has been associated in attempts to enlarge Michelangelo's oeuvre as easel painter, only one, the unfinished Entombment, in the National Gallery, London, is almost unanimously attributed to Michelangelo himself. The Manchester Madonna, in the same gallery, is probably in part by him. K1569 is not satisfactorily included in his work and it is too unlike the London Madonna to justify its more frequent attribution to the Master of the Manchester Madonna. It is very likely, however, by the same hand as two others in this group, a tondo of the Madonna and Child with the Little St. John in the Vienna Academy and a Madonna and Child formerly in a private collection at Baden bei Zurich. With somewhat less certainty the same hand is credited with a Pieta in the Galleria Nazionale, Rome, and with a Madonna and Child recently on the art market in Florence.(1) For the present, the painter of these pictures, which may well date around 1505, remains anonymous. He is strongly Michelangelesque, but he is also influenced by the Ferrarese: the mannered poses in the Vienna composition, for example, are especially reminiscent of Tura, and in K1569 the fantastic arrangement of the Christ Child is more Ferrarese than Florentine: His chair, uncertainly defined as to seat and legs, seems to be in danger of falling over the edge of the elevated platform. Provenance: Private Collection, London. Contini Bonacossi, Florence. Kress acquisition, 1948.
References
(1) All the paintings discussed in this catalogue entry are reproduced by S. J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence, vol. II, 1961, figs. 332-338. G. Fiocco (in Critica d'Arte, vol. II, 1937, pp. 172 ff., and in Le Arti, vol. IV, 1941, pp. 5 ff.) attributes K1569, along with the Entombment and the Madonnas of London, Vienna, and Zurich, to the youthful Michelangelo. Longhi (in Le Arti, vol. IV, 1941, p. 136) attributes the group to an anonymous painter. C. de Tolnay (The Youth of Michelangelo, 1943, pp. 236 f.) denies K1569 and all of the others to Michelangelo and favors their attribution to Antonio Mini. F. Zeri (in Paragone, no. 43, July 1953, pp. 15 ff.) gives them (exclusive of the London Entombment), more confidently, to the Master of the Manchester Madonna, as does S. J. Freedberg (vol. I, pp. 255 ff. of op. cit., above), who believes that even the London Entombment was finished by the Master of the Manchester Madonna after it had been begun by Michelangelo. C. Gould (National Gallery Catalogues: Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools, 1962, pp. 92 ff.; see also in Burlington Magazine, vol. cv, 1963, p. 512), while giving the Entombment to Michelangelo definitely and the Manchester Madonna to him tentatively, ascribes K1569 and the others most like it to an anonymous follower of Michelangelo. B. Berenson (Italian Pictures ... Florentine School, vol. I, 1963, p. 149) attributes K1569, along with the Pieta in Rome and the Vienna Madonna and the one formerly in Baden bei Zurich (listed by Berenson as homeless) to an anonymous early follower of Michelangelo.