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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 129: 

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single board of poplar.
The panel and the gilded frame were probably cut from the same
board. There is one vertical crack in the wood. The verso is painted
brown. The gesso ground is white, with a layer of red bole under
the gilding. Under the flesh colours there is green earth underpainting.
There are extensive retouches and overpaintings. For example,
the steps below the Virgin have been overpainted. The outlines
of the Virgin are reinforced. There is a thick layer of yellowed
varnish. Documented restorations: 1960: Consolidation of flaking
colour, filling and retouching of paint losses; 1975: Consolidation
of flaking colour; 1988: Consolidation of the paint layer. Filling and
retouching. Crack in the panel glued. Retouching, partial varnish.

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Budapest; Gunnar Björkman
1936; deposited at the Nationalmuseum 1946; gift of Gunnar Björkman,
1954.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1958, p. 118 (as Masolino, attributed to);
Berenson 1963, p. 137; NM Cat. 1990, p. 212 (as Masolino, attributed
to); Roberts 1993, pp. 203–205.

The Madonna and Child are flanked by St John
the Baptist and St Francis. Two flying angels
are crowning the Virgin, with a crown that is
punched into the golden background. The head of
the Madonna and the angels are in a fairly good
state of preservation, but the lower part of the
panel has been extensively repainted. According to
older photographs, the steps on which the Madonna
is seated were originally a chequered floor
incised into the golden ground. Even the Christ
Child seems to have been repainted at some
unknown date.

The painting has a provenance from a private
collection at a castle near Budapest. It was
brought to Sweden in 1934, purchased by Gunnar
Björkman in 1936 and later given to the Nationalmuseum
in 1954. The panel was attributed to
Masolino da Panicale by Raimond van Marle in
1934, an attribution confirmed by Osvald Sirén
and Henrik Cornell in 1936.¹ Berenson then
changed the attribution by adding the collaboration
of Andrea di Gusto, especially concerning
the angels surrounding the Madonna.² This
attribution was maintained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue of European paintings and
slightly changed to Masolino and his workshop
in Perri Lee Robert’s publication Masolino da
Panicale from 1993.³

Masolino is known to have painted several panels
of the Madonna and Child,⁴ but no painting
has so far been connected with his years in Hungary.
Considering its provenance, its partly high
quality and its present state, one could suggest
that the Nationalmuseum panel is in fact the
only known painting preserved from Masolino’s
period in Hungary.

As Roberts points out, the head of the Nationalmuseum
Madonna shows great similarities
to the Madonna and Child with Four Angels and
God the Father in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich,
dated c. 1420, but if the Nationalmuseum
painting was executed during Masolino’s
stay in Hungary, it was obviously a commission
for Filippo Scolari and can with certainty be
dated to 1425/26.
je

1 The attribution is confirmed by correspondence between
the previous owner and the experts on Masolino at the
time, Raimond Van Marle (1934), Osvald Sirén (1936) and
Henrik Cornell (1936); NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet,
“Masolino da Panicale”.
2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, “Masolino da
Panicale”; Berenson 1963, vol. 1, p. 137.
3 Roberts 1993, pp. 203–205.
4 See Roberts 1993. [End]

Madonna med barnet och Johannes döparen och den helige Franciscus