Anders Zorn (Mora, 1860 - 1920, Mora)
Madonna, 1900
Etching on wove paper, Additional Dimension (framed): 20 11/16 x 16 5/16 in. (52.5 x 41.4 cm)
37.9 x 27.9 cm (14 15/16 x 11 in.)
This etching is very dark except for the seated female figure bathed in light in the center right of the composition. The woman sits facing from the viewer's angle turned to the left side. Her concerned eyes, with straight furrowed eyebrows stare straight ahead in a daze. Her nose and slightly parted lips are drawn with hints of markings. Her forehead and to the viewer’s left is etched with many long dark strokes, making her viewer’s right side bright with only a few marks on her cheek. Her clothing appears heavy and layered. To the viewer’s left you see her hand gently placed on the swaddled infant, cradling the infant's head and shoulders, close to her chest. Her arm to the viewers right lays on her lap and disappears under the infant's back. The baby’s hair is long, straight, even marks and the face appears in white with no distinguishable features. The etching is signed at the bottom.
Short Gallery
Commentary
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.
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.