National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Madonna and Child in a Landscape
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

No overview.

Inscription

later addition by unknown hand, lower center on parapet: IDEM / Z.B.

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Probably Bartolomeo della Nave, Venice; James, 3rd Marquess (later 1st Duke) of Hamilton [1606-1649], London, by c. 1638; Leopold Wilhelm, Archduke of Austria, by 1651.[1] (sale, Robinson, Fisher & Harding, London, 11 May 1922, no. 101, as The Virgin and Child by Bernardino Zacchetti); (Julius Böhler, Munich); sold 1922 to Ralph Harman [1873-1931] and Mary Batterman [d. 1951] Booth, Grosse Pointe, Michigan; gift 1946 to NGA.

[1] Ellis Waterhouse claimed, it would seem correctly, that the Bellini Madonna and Child depicted in Tenier's painting of Leopold Wilhelm's gallery in Brussels was identical with number 116 in a list of pictures, probably from the della Nave collection, compiled around 1638-1640, when the collection was offered for sale to the Marquess (later Duke) of Hamilton ("Paintings from Venice for Seventeeth-century England: Some Records of a Forgotten Transaction," Italian Studies 7 [1952]: 9, 18 [1-23]). Entry 116 reads "Our Lady p. 3 1/2 & 2 1/2 idem." The artist for number 116 in the inventory is given as "John Belin" in the previous item (115). Though Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:51 note 3, claimed that the measurements for number 116 are inconsistent with the NGA painting, in fact they agree both in the proportion of height to width and in the overall dimensions: the unit of measurement in the list is described as "palmi," or palms, a measurement used in Rome and elsewhere in Italy and equivalent to about 22 centimeters (Angelo Martini, Manuele di metrologia, Rome, 1883: 596 [reprint 1976]). This would make the dimensions of number 116 about 77 x 55 centimeters--very close to the current measurements of the NGA painting. Waterhouse calculated from comparing the 1638-1640 inventory and the engravings in Tenier's Theatrum Pictorium (Brussels, 1660) that over sixty pictures in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm came from the della Nave collection. The possibility that the NGA painting originally belonged to della Nave is increased by the fact that such a painting is not likely to have been purchased individually, given the taste for later art that informs the Leopold Wilhelm collection as a whole.

Exhibition History

1923
Loan Exhibition of the Arts of the Italian Renaissance, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1923, no. 43.
1923
Ralph H. Booth Loan Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1923, no cat.
1927
Fifth Loan Exhibition of Old and Modern Masters, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1927, no. 6, as Madonna and Child.
1933
Sixteenth Loan Exhibition of Old Masters. Italian Paintings of the XIV to XVI Century, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1933, no. 97, as Madonna and Child.
1939
Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 8, repro., as The Madonna and Child.

Bibliography

1948
Recent Additions to the Ralph and Mary Booth Collection. Washington, 1948: unpaginated, repro.
1949
"Ralph and Mary Booth Bequest in der National Gallery of Art, Washington." Phoebus 2, no. 2 (1949): 73, repro.
1950
"Old Masters in America: Important Gifts to the National Gallery, Washington" The Illustrated London News (September 16, 1950): 449, repro.
1956
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1956: 24, repro., as Madonna and Child.
1957
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 29
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 303, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 12, as Madonna and Child.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 4, repro., as Madonna and Child.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 22, repro., as Madonna and Child.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: I:50-51, II:pl. 28
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 203, no. 244, color repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 42, repro.
1992
Tempestini, Anchise. Giovanni Bellini: catalogo complete dei dipinti. Florence, 1992: 128-129, no. 41, color repro.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 60-63, color repro.

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