Object details
Accession number
S27e14
Primary Creator
Benedetto da Maiano
(Florence, 1442 - 1497, Florence)
Full title
Virgin and Child
Creation Date
about 1495
Provenance
Published by a French art magazine as in the possession of an unnamed Florentine art dealer on 31 December 1898. (as by the Italian artist Sperandio Savelli, about 1425-about 1504)
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the connoisseur and art dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), Florence for about 25,500 lire on 29 September 1899, through the American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959). (as by Benedetto da Maiano)
Dimensions
104 cm (40 15/16 in.)
Display Media
Polychromed and gilded terracotta
Dimension Notes
Frame: 104.1 cm (41 in.) diameter
Web Commentary
As the Christ Child stands on the Virgin’s lap, he raises his arms and turns towards her, as though squirming in the embrace. Her face remains calm and serene as she steadies the child with her hands.This tondo (a circular work of art) has a wood base onto which the figures and the garland frame, both made of terracotta, are mounted. The figures were originally painted white, with some areas burnished. The garland was also painted white and selectively gilded. The terracotta sculpture was probably made to look like carved marble.
Permanent Gallery Location
Long Gallery
Bibliography
"Revue des Revues." La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité: Supplément a la Gazette des Beaux-Arts (31 December 1898), p. 281. (as by Sperandio)
Wilhelm von Bode. Denkmäler der renaissance-sculptur Toscanas: in historischer anordnung (Munich, 1892-1905), pp. 113, 195, pl. 354b. (the plate printed in 1900; as by Benedetto da Maiano, earlier than a simillar Strozzi family tomb in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, pl. 354a)
Catalogue. Fenway Court. (Boston, 1903), p. 23. (as by Benedetto da Maiano)
Adolfo Venturi. "Capolavori d'arte in una Galleria di Boston." Nazione della Sera (30 March 1925).
Morris Carter. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, 1925; Reprint, Boston, 1972), p. 179.
Lorenzo Cèndali. Giuliano e Benedetto da Majano (Fiesole) (Florence, 1926), p. 142.
Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan. Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance: the Charles Eliot Norton lectures for the years 1927-1928 (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 150-51, fig. 68. (as by Benedetto da Maiano)
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 235, pl. 8. (as Benedetto da Maiano, "characteristic of [his] late work")
Stuart Preston. "The Madonna and Child" in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 26. (as Benedetto da Maiano, about 1490)
Rollin Hadley. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 7, no. 22 (26 Jan. 1964), p. 2. (excerpting Eric MacLagan, pp. 150-51)
Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), pp. 115-16, no. 145. (as Benedetto da Maiano, about 1494-1497)
Rollin van N. Hadley. Museums Discovered: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1981), pp. 158-59, ill. (as Benedetto da Maiano, about 1494-1497)
Rollin van N. Hadley (ed.). The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner 1887-1924 (Boston, 1987), pp. 167-68.
Roberta J.M. Olson. The Florentine Tondo (New York, 2000), p. 155, fig. 6.33. (as by Benedetto da Maiano, about 1490)
Doris Carl. Benedetto da Maiano: A Florentine Sculptor at the Threshold of the High Renaissance, vol. 1 (Belgium, 2006), pp. 66, 73-74, 103, 104 (as Benedetto da Maiano, as a late work, as perhaps intended for a funerary monument)
Doris Carl. Benedetto da Maiano: A Florentine Sculptor at the Threshold of the High Renaissance, vol. 2 (Belgium, 2006), pl. 23.
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