Small Cowper Madonna
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| The Small Cowper Madonna |
|---|
| Raphael , around 1505 |
| Oil on [poplar] wood? |
| 59.5 × 44 cm |
| National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
The Small Cowper Madonna is a painting by Raphael from his late Florentine period. The painting is one of five paintings by Raphael in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
history
Raphael stayed in Florence from the autumn of 1504 to 1508 . Seventeen paintings depicting the Madonna and Child have survived from this period . A client for the picture is not known. In the Florence of that time, such pictures, which were popular as wedding gifts, were often not produced to order, but for the art market.
This Madonna picture was sold from a private collection or by a dealer in 1780 to George Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738–1789) and remained in the Cowper / Panshanger family until 1913 through inheritance. In 1913, Ethel Desborough, a granddaughter of George Cowper, 6th Earl Cowper († 1856) sold the picture to the art dealer Duveen Brothers , who bought up European art on a large scale for the American market. Duveen sold the painting in 1914 to entrepreneur and art collector Peter Widener (1871-1943), a sponsor of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. After his father's death, his son Joseph E. Widener donated the Widener Collection, including two Madonna paintings by Raphael, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which opened in 1941.
The picture was cleaned, restored, and scientifically examined at the National Gallery in 1981.
description
Mary is depicted as a half-length figure with the baby Jesus on her lap. Behind her stretches a hilly meadow landscape with a small lake in which trees and the sky are reflected, a blue chain of hills stretches on the horizon. To the left of her in the background rises a mountain which is crowned by a typical Renaissance church with a temple front, dome and campanile . The sky is clear, almost cloudless.
Mary sits on a wooden bench in front of a parapet made of stone blocks. She wears a simple red dress with a wide neckline. The cloak tied around her hips billows in heavy folds on the bench. The coat itself is edged with gold embroidery and lined with green. Over her light blonde hair, she wears a veil that falls on her shoulders and winds around her arms and shoulders. A halo is indicated around Maria's head. She seems lost in thought, her gaze is sad and as if lost. The child stands on the mother's lap and gently wraps her arms around her neck while Maria gently supports him with her left hand.
Raphael's composition is based on Perugino's models, in whose workshop in Urbino he had worked from around 1500 until he moved to Florence in 1504. In Florence he continued to deal intensively with this topic, which has accompanied him throughout his life. The influences of Leonardo and Michelangelo , who fundamentally differentiate his Florentine drawings and pictures from Perugino, with the depiction of intimate mother and child relationships, became fruitful here.
literature
- David Allan Brown: Raphael's 'Small Cowper Madonna' and the 'Madonna of the Meadow:' Their Technique and Leonard Sources. In: Artibus et historiae 8, 1983, pp. 9-26.
- Jürg Meyer zur Capellen : Raphael. A Critical Catalog of His Paintings . Vol. 2. Arcos Verlag, Landshut 2001, ISBN 3-935339-21-6 , catalog no. 23.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Provenance , accessed on May 14, 2019
- ↑ Raphael's Madonnas: Full of Grace. Influence of Perugino. Oxford University Press 2015. Retrieved June 4, 2015.