| Piero di Cosimo’s panel shows the Virgin and Child on her lap and the adoring young St John in a hilly landscape that reveals hints of Dutch painting in its effects of breadth and depth. Yet that school’s new atmospheric qualities are unwanted here: all the pictorial elements as far as the horizon are drawn sharply and meticulously. On some withered branches, a black cloth of honour hangs behind the Madonna: what was once magnificent brocade is now simple cloth. A book, probably the Bible, lies open for reading on a gnarled tree-trunk. The odd flower is seen in the foreground, the carnations being a reference to Christ’s Passion. Mary’s delicate face is reproduced with particular precision, and it reflects the light using fine chiaroscuro modelling. |
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Oil on panel
height 72 cm, width 54 cm
Inv.-No. GE264
Provenance: signed 1733 by seal as entail
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