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Mantuan school, 18th century, Madonna suckling the Child

About the Item

Mantuan school, 18th century Madonna suckling the Child Oil on panel, 27.5x22 cm The softly collected and intimate dimension suggested by the present painting underscores the certainly private nature of the painting's commission. The work, a Madonna Lactans with a strong intimist thrust dated around the mid-eighteenth century, features soft, textured brushstrokes that seem to show the legacies of Venetian and Mantuan culture of the early eighteenth century. Among the depictions of Mary's motherhood expressed by pictorial art, a very special prominence is given to the iconography of Our Lady of Milk to enshrine the reality of the Mother of God and the effectiveness of her intercession. Whether its origins lie in the early centuries of Christianity in Egypt, among the Copts, or in Rome-according to lines of study that are for now discordant-the iconography of Galaktotrophousa (from the Greek "she who nourishes with milk") or Virgo Lactans spread especially from the 13th century and experienced an extraordinary Ticino proliferation between the 15th and 16th centuries. Following a period of censorship during the Counter-Reformation years, the iconography rediscovered a new popularity beginning in the eighteenth century, as also demonstrated by this painting. Mary's milk also becomes a sign and pledge of the graces she obtains from Christ for men, in an evocative parallelism between blood and milk, between the Son's wounds and the Mother's womb. The compositional balance, the quality of the drawing and the plastic consistency of the drapery allow us to approximate the painter's hand to the sphere of Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770), a painter from Verona, working in different cities in northern Italy and aware of the teachings of Bazzani and members of the Mantuan school: he underwent, in addition to the aforementioned suggestions of Bazzanesque derivation, the influence of Ludovico Dorigny, Antonio Balestra and Giovan Battista Tiepolo, and in the middle period of his activity studied the production of Veronese and Titian. Looking at the painting in question, one notices the composed and decorous tone, foreign to excessive virtuosity, even balanced. Harkening back to the Baroque tradition, the sacred theme is treated with a softened and persuasive patheticism in which everything is well calibrated and dosed. The oval with the Virgin suckling the Child can also presumably be approached from the activity of Giovanni Giacomo Figari (1739-1809), a pupil of Cignaroli and a rising star in the Brescia-Verona area in the second half of the 18th century. Little or nothing is known of Figari's beginnings, although we find works in the Mantuan environment but especially in that of southwestern Trentino. Noteworthy is the emblematic canvas depicting the Washing of the Feet (in the church of San Floriano in Storo, Trento), which is a demonstration of the qualitative leap the painter made as he moved from Mantua-a city where he absorbed elements from direct observation of Bazzani's works-to territories further north. Not far from Storo, also in Tavodo (province of Trento), we find works such as the large altarpiece depicting the Assumption of the Virgin, where it is clear the neoclassical path that Figari was about to take, who began to deviate from the style of works such as those under consideration, which analyzing the painter's movements and his stylistic turns, should be placed around 1765. Clear is that, in our painting, the pronounced chiaroscuro that distinguishes the works of Bazzani and the members of his flourishing workshop in Mantua is met with a rapid, loose, undefined, and textural brushstroke that looks to Tiepolesque experiences but also to the great innovations introduced in painting by the great Venetian masters between the 16th and 17th centuries.
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 8.67 in (22 cm)Diameter: 10.63 in (27 cm)
  • Style:
    Other (In the Style Of)
  • Materials and Techniques:
    Wood,Oiled
  • Place of Origin:
    Italy
  • Period:
    18th Century and Earlier
  • Date of Manufacture:
    18th 18th Century
  • Condition:
    Wear consistent with age and use.
  • Seller Location:
    Milan, IT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU5918245122562

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