Francesco Prata da Caravaggio

Private collection, France;

Thereafter acquired by the present owner.

Francesco Frangi first identified this tender yet solemn depiction of the Madonna and Child as having been executed by Francesco Prata da Caravaggio, a Lombard painter from Caravaggio, near Milan. Dateable to circa 1525, the present work belongs to a relatively late moment in the artist's career, when he was working in Brescia and came into contact with the eccentric style of Girolamo di Romano, called il Romanino. Even still, the work beautifully synthesizes Brescian figural types with a Lombard weightiness.

Beginning in the 1980s, scholars have illuminated the affinities between Francesco Prata's oeuvre and works produced by contemporary painters in Brescia and Milan. In the present example, the painter's use of facial types—especially the tilted and slightly asymmetrical face of the Madonna—evoke similar devotional works by Romanino, yet the chromatic refinement and volumetric depiction of form recall the Milanese painters Bernardo Zenale and Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino.