Madonna Manchester
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| The Manchester Madonna |
|---|
| Michelangelo Buonarroti , around 1497 |
| Tempera on wood |
| 104.5 × 77 cm |
| National Gallery (London) |
The Manchester Madonna is one of the few remaining panel paintings by Michelangelo Buonarroti .
The image of Mary with the child, the boy John and four angels is also referred to as the Manchester Madonna in art historiography . This name goes back to the year 1857, when the picture was shown for the first time in an exhibition in Manchester and where the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen ascribed it to Michelangelo Buonarroti. This ascription met with a broad response from the experts and was largely rejected. While Frédéric Reise (1877) and Hans Wölffin (1891) only want to give the picture to a successor, David Robert Moore (1881) considered the picture to be a work by Baccio Bandinelli . Bernard Berenson (1903) thought of a work by Giuliano Bugiardini , Anny E. Popp (1925) attributed it to the Michelangelo student Antonio Mini and Adolfo Venturi (1932) to Jacopino del Conte .
In 1953, Federico Zeri studied the picture in detail and ascribed it to the so-called Master of the Manchester Madonna , who was also assigned a number of other pictures that had been linked to the work of Michelangelo by research over time. Pietro Toesca , on the other hand, had already advocated the authorship of the picture by Michelangelo as early as 1934, which was gradually joined by numerous other art historians, who, however, admitted that someone else was involved. On the occasion of a small exhibition about the young Michelangelo, which was organized by the London National Gallery in 1994/95, the picture was subjected to a detailed scientific investigation. This solidified the opinion of the experts that it must actually be a work by Michelangelo, which was created shortly after his time with Domenico Ghirlandaio .
The picture was left unfinished. It shows Mary with bared right breast and a book in hand, which the Christ child playing at her feet is reaching for. At his side stands the Johannesknabe. This ensemble is surrounded by four angels, of which only the two on the right have been executed. The two angels on the left can only be seen in the first outlines. Also unfinished is the top part of Maria's hair as well as most of the background.
The picture was formerly in the Borghese collection in Rome, where it was ascribed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. After the picture was determined to be a work by Michelangelo, it was brokered for sale by the German art agent Otto Mündler, who mainly worked in London and Paris , at the Berlin Gemäldegalerie . He wanted to recommend himself as a possible art agent for the Berlin Museum and offered the picture as the first offer to Scales and at the same time, in a copy of his letter, to General Director Ignatz Maria von Olfers , who simply ignored the offer and thus prevented Scales from being active could be. When there was no response from Berlin, the National Gallery in London took action.
literature
- Charles de Tolnay, Ettore Camesaca: Classics of Art - The painted work of Michelangelo . Kunstkreis Luzern - Freudenstadt - Vienna 1966.
- Michael Hirst, Jill Dunkerton: Making & Meaning the young Michelangelo . London 1994, ISBN 1-85709-066-7 (hardcover) and ISBN 1-85709-065-9 (softcover).
