Beskrivning: En ängel stiger in och uppmärksammar vår närvaro i rummet, där Jungfru Maria sitter med Jesusbarnet i sitt knä. Hon ser ömsint på barnet, som håller i hennes fingrar. Tronen visar att hon efter sin död blir himlens drottning. Under slutet av 1400-talet var konstnären Francesco Napoletano en av Leonardo da Vincis medhjälpare i Milano och influerades starkt av hans måleri, med mjuka övergångar mellan ljus och skugga samt disiga landskap.

Description: An angel enters and takes notice of our presence in the room, where the Virgin Mary sits with the infant Jesus on her lap. She looks tenderly at the baby holding her fingers. The throne shows that she, after her death, becomes the queen of heaven. In the late 1400s, Francesco Napoletano was one of da Vinci’s assistants in Milan and was strongly influenced by his painting style, with gentle shifts between light and shadow as well as the hazy scenery.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 135:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single board of hardwood.
The board has been thinned and another thin board of wood
glued to the verso; later, a cradle has been attached. The panel is
cropped at the lower and upper edges. The panel is worm-eaten.
The gesso ground is white. The paint layer is partly overpainted,
and the retouches and overpaintings have been repeated on several
occasions. The paint layer in the Virgin’s dress is very thick
and there is a dense network of drying cracks that have been retouched
(shows clearly in infrared reflectography). The paint layer
is generally abraded. The varnish is very thick and yellowed. Documented
restorations: 1927: The thin panel reinforced. Removal of
varnish; 1934: Consolidation of flaking colour. Treatment of verso;
1978: Consolidation of paint layer. Filling and retouching. Adjustment
of cradle; 2012: Cleaning. Retouching and partial varnish.

PROVENANCE: Gift of Herman Rasch, 1927.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sirén 1933, pp. 133–134; NM Cat. 1958, p. 74
(as Francesco Napoletano); Marani 1987; NM Cat. 1990, p. 135 (as
Francesco Napoletano); Fiorio 1998.

EXHIBITED: Passioner: Konst och känslor genom fem sekler,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2012.

The Madonna and Child are seated on a throne
in front of a cloth of honour in a secular room.
She is dressed in a red robe and a blue mantle, the
latter turned dark and thick owing to the original
wax ground. The naked Christ Child turns his
eyes towards the viewer. Two angels are entering
the background of the scene, the one to the right
looking straight at the beholder. The room is
drawn in linear perspective, and the detailed windows
and a cupboard with bowls on a linen cloth
create a typical domestic setting of the early 16th
century, reminiscent of the interiors executed by
Flemish masters such as the Van Eyck brothers
and Rogier van der Weyden. As Sirén has stated
before, this is a clearly Northern setting, with
Leonardesque figures.¹

The painting was given to the Museum by
Herman Rasch in 1927 and attributed to Francesco
Napoletano some years later, an attribution
that is maintained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue of European paintings.² Napoletano’s
best-known works are the Madonna and Child
with SS John the Baptist and Sebastian in Zürich,
the Madonna and Child in the Pinacoteca di
Brera, and the Madonna and Child, known as the
Madonna Lia, in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. 
As a close follower of Leonardo, he has
also been suggested as the painter of one of the
angels once surrounding the Virgin of the Rocks
altarpiece, now in the National Gallery in London.
This angel is similar in appearance to those
of the Nationalmuseum panel, although they are
executed on a much smaller scale.

As mentioned above, Francesco combines
Northern art with the new imagery of Leonardo
da Vinci. But in the present panel we can also
find details related to the Venetian art scene,
such as the throne and the cloth of honour, and
possibly also the relatively rich colours. As we
now know from archival sources that Francesco
died in Venice in 1501, this painting can be dated
to the late 1490s, with 1501 as terminus ante quem.
It may have been executed in Venice as one of his
final commissions.
je

1 Sirén 1933, p. 133.
2 Ibid.; NM Cat. 1990, p. 135.
[END]

Utforska konstnärer och föremål som finns i Nationalmuseums samlingar.

Explore the artists and artworks of Nationalmuseum Sweden.

Francesco Napoletano | Madonnan med barnet | Nationalmuseum

Francesco Napoletano | Madonna and Child | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2011

Foto: Bodil Karlsson / Nationalmuseum 1993

Foto: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum 2016