Orazio Gentileschi

Madonna nursing the infant Christ

Lot Closed

October 21, 04:37 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collection, Miami

Follower of Orazio Gentileschi

Madonna nursing the infant Christ

oil on canvas

canvas: 41½ by 33¼ in.; 105.4 by 84.5 cm.

framed: 57⅛ by 48½ in.; 145.1 by 123.2 cm.

Please note that the attribution for this lot should read "Follower of Orazio Gentileschi."

A.G.H. Ward, Hampstead;
By whom sold, London, Christie's, 4 March 1927, lot 142 (as Crespi);
Where acquired by Campbell, for £23.2;
With Galerie Heinemann, New York, by 1937;
Thereafter acquired by the present collector.

R.W. Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting, University Park 1981, p. 147, under cat. no. 16;
R. Contini, in Artemisia, exhibition catalogue, Florence 1991, p. 137, under cat. no. 14;
K. Christiansen, in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exhibition catalogue, New York 2001, p. 92, under cat. no. 15, reproduced p. 92, fig. 47.

This poignant scene of motherly devotion derives from a 1609 painting by Orazio Gentileschi today in Bucharest (Muzeul National de Arta al Romaniei, inv. no. 362/8328). The eye contact between mother and son heightens the scene's sense of intimacy, underscored by the naturalism of the woman's facial and bodily features: she is a veristic madonna lactans.

The composition is known in several variants and Gentileschi produced at least one other autograph version in 1609 for Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.