The Virgin Adoring the Christ Child with Saint John the Baptist

细节

Follower of Domenico Ghirlandaio (Florence 1448/49-1494)
The Virgin Adoring the Christ Child with Saint John the Baptist
tempera on panel, circular
38 3/8 in. (97.5 cm.) diameter

来源

with Ehrich Galleries, New York, by 1898, where purchased by
Martin A. Ryerson, Chicago, and by descent to his widow, by whom bequeathed to
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1937.

出版

Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Objects in the Museum, Part I, Sculpture and Painting, 3rd ed., Chicago, 1898, p. 124, as Domenico Ghirlandaio.
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague, 1931, XIII, p. 222, no. 1, as Mainardi.
W.R. Valentiner, Paintings in the Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, unpublished manuscript, 1932.
'Exhibition of the Ryerson Gift', Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, XXXII, 1938, p. 3, as Mainardi.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 266, as Mainardi.
H. Huth, 'Italianische Kunstwerke im Art Institut von Chicago, USA', in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae, Munich, 1961, p. 516, as Mainardi.
B.B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972, pp. 117, 344, as Mainardi.
E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York and London, 1976, p. 214, as plausibly by Benedetto Ghirlandaio.
C. Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in The Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection, Chicago, 1993, pp. 100-102, illustrated.

展览

Chicago, The Renaissance Society, The University of Chicago, Religious Art from the Fourth Century to the Present Time, 1930, no. 19, as 'Mainardi'.
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Old and New Masters from Chicago Collections, 1935.
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Ryerson Gift, 1938, as 'Mainardi'.
Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fort Wayne Art Museum, Christmas Story in Art, 1953, as 'Sebastian Mainardi'.

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拍品专文

For most of the 20th century, this stately work was thought to have been painted by the brother-in-law and pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sebastiano Mainardi, an attribution supported by Van Marle (op. cit., 1931), Valentiner (op. cit., 1932), Fredericksen and Zeri (op. cit., 1972), among others. In 1976, Everett Fahy rejected this attribution, suggesting that it may have been painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio's younger brother, Benedetto (op. cit.). Fahy based his attribution on similarities between this work and the Nativity in the John G. Johnson Collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (op. cit.), which had previously been given to Benedetto by Berenson. More recently, Christopher Lloyd (op. cit.) challenged this notion, observing that neither the present work nor the Philadelphia panel are stylistically close enough to the artist's only signed work (the Adoration of the Shepherds in the church of Notre Dame, Aigueperse, Auvergne).

An unusual feature in the present tondo is the inclusion of Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata from a Seraph in the background, in this context, an allusion to Christ's death on the Cross. The large goldfinch that perches behind the Virgin serves a similarly symbolic purpose, as according to legend, the bird obtained its distinctive red spot when it plucked at Christ's crown of thorns on the road to Calvary and was stained by his blood.