This image of a seated mother holding her child in her arms is unique in Zorn’s oeuvre. It is related to Zorn’s group of rural peasant subjects from Mora; however, its rich religious symbolism makes it stand out.

Zorn painted Madonna after an argument with the Swedish art critic Tor Hedberg (1862–1932). According to the largely anticlerical Zorn, he executed and named the painting “Madonna” because he wanted to demonstrate his religious feelings. The compositional type of a seated mother with her baby, her face idealized, stems back to similar images painted by High Renaissance artists. Read together with the man in the background (hardly discernible at the upper right of the etching), this subject is strongly reminiscent of the Holy Family. But Zorn described the scene as a remorseful mother confronted by her former fiancé. It seems as if he were attempting to reconcile two different pictorial types in Madonna—the naturalistic peasant scene and a religious allegory. As in other cases, Zorn might have chosen this strategy so as to create an ambivalent subject.

Source: Oliver Tostmann, Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America, Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2013, pp. 116 - 117, cat. 10.

Oliver Tostmann, Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America, Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2013, pp. 116 - 117, cat. 10.