Beskrivning: Madonnan håller med höger hand det sovande barnet och för med den vänstra ett svart kors i barnets hand. Maria är iklädd grön mantel över det vita huvuddoket, Jesusbarnet en röd klädesvåd över skjortan. Mörkt brun bakgrund


Se beskrivning i den engelska versionen.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 46: 

FORMER INV. NOS.: 438 (M. 1804); KM 117.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of thin, densely
woven, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been lined with glue and
mounted with staples on a Martelli strainer. This was probably
done in Italy before shipping to Sweden. The ground is red and
covers the whole support. UV fluorescence reveals many old retouches 
and overpaintings; for example, the Virgin’s veil has been
completely overpainted. Some of these overpaintings are hidden
by the very thick, yellowed varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 134, no. 438 (as Giuseppe Maria Crespi).

There are no paintings attributed to Crespi in
Fredenheim’s catalogue, however the present
work can be found in the 1804 catalogue of the
Martelli Collection and the attribution of the
painting by Corvi and Tofanelli on the lost verso
Martelli paper label, transcribed by Sander, read
“Spagnoletto di Bologna. Madonna”. Masreliez’s
inventory of 1809 include two paintings ascribed
to Crespi.¹

The present painting is of high quality, and
there is no question as to its attribution to
Crespi. It bears all the hallmarks of his singular
artistic invention. Amongst Crespi’s previously
published works, it seems to be closest to a
painting of a similar size, formerly in a Bolognese
private collection, and recently sold at Christie’s
in 2012.² In both paintings, the Christ
Child is depicted in a striking glowing light,
finely offset against the dark background. His
overall position, profile of face and flowing golden
locks show a very close likeness between the two
works, almost to the extent that it seems they
were originally pendants, especially considering
that the Christ Child is also reversed in relation to
his counterpart in the previously known painting.
The Madonna is wearing a cloak in a saturated
blue colour, which in the Christie’s painting
contrasts nicely with the golden hues of the Christ
Child and the white of the cloth that he is partly
draped in. In the Stockholm work, however, this
contrast is further enhanced and given greater
dramatic effect by the use of an added drape in the
boldest red, partly covering the Child. Together
with the pale countenance of the Madonna, the
saturated blue and the golden glow create a superb
chromatic harmony, reminiscent of Titian as well
as Barocci, and it is not surprising that this colour
combination recurs in several of Crespi’s paintings,
such as Tarquin and Lucretia in the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Continence
of Scipio in the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia.
Particularly similar in palette, especially as
regards the use of the brilliant red, is the Magdalen
in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.³

Characteristics such as the careful delineation
of the Madonna’s thin and elongated, almost
Mannerist, fingers, the typical depiction of the
female face with its finely pointed chin, large eyes
and heavy eyelids, and the “feathery”, yet bold,
impasto brushstrokes rendering the varying hues
of garments, all point to a firm attribution of the
painting to Crespi. The Madonna’s left hand is
very similar to that of the woman in the Woman
with a Dove in the Birmingham Museum and
Art Gallery, Birmingham, as well as to the left
hand of the woman in the variant version of that
painting in the Columbia Museum of Art, South
Carolina.⁴ The kind of cabinet picture that the
present painting represents, for private devotional
use, is also typical of the artist’s production
around 1720–25, a period when religious subjects
seem to have occupied all his attention and when
he also painted several altarpieces for churches in
Emilia, Tuscany and as far north as Bergamo.

In the painting recently sold at Christie’s, the
fact that the Christ Child clasps a small cross
in his right hand is somewhat obscured by the
shadow cast by the Madonna’s cloak. The tender
way in which the connection between mother and
child is conveyed through this gesture, however, is
more clearly emphasized in the Nationalmuseum
painting. The connection conveyed between the
mother and child through her gentle touching
of the top of the cross and the child’s firm grip
of the same in his little fist, depicted with fine
naturalistic detail, becomes even more heartfelt
considering the cross’s future implications and its
meaning for the relationship between mother and
child; in short, a compositional invention of the
highest order.
dp

1 Sander 1872–76, III, p. 134, no. 438; NM Archives, Kongl.
Museum, F:1, Tableaux en Sus du Nombre marque au
Catalogue du D. Martelli (Document marked “1810/af
Masreliez”).
2 Emiliani and Rave 1990, pp. 382–383, cat. no. 66. Christie’s,
Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale, 3 July 2012. The
particular depiction of the Madonna and Child found in
this painting also forms the central part of Crespi’s the
Adoration of the Shepherds in the Seattle Art Museum. See
Emiliani and Rave 1990, pp. 380–381, cat. no. 65.
3 Spike 1986, pp. 112–113, 119, 121–122, cat. nos. 2, 6; Emiliani
and Rave 1990, pp. 278–279, 398–399, cat. nos. 14, 74.
4 Spike 1986, pp. 114–115, cat. no. 3; Emiliani and Rave 1990,
pp. 302–303, 310–311, cat. nos. 27, 32. [End]

Madonna och barnet