Hitherto unpublished, this tender depiction of the Madonna and Child is a new addition to the corpus of Cesare Magni. The artist’s works are very much influenced by the style of Leonardo da Vinci which pervaded Lombard painting in the first half of the sixteenth century. The painting can be compared stylistically to Magni’s
Madonna and Child in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, which dates to 1530 and in which the figures are similarly placed before a curtain and window, with a mountainous river landscape beyond.
1 More compelling still are the parallels between the treatment of the Virgin in the present painting with that in the artist’s
Madonna and Child in the Museo Borgogna, Vercelli.
2 The two figures bear a striking resemblance in the smooth roundness of the face, the form of the chin, the large lidded downcast eyes and the dimple at the clavicle.
We are grateful to Francesco Frangi for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.
1. For an image of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana Madonna see Fondazione Fererico Zeri, Università di Bologna, online database, entry no. 32703.
2. For an image of the Museo Borgogna Madonna see above, entry no. 32711.