Madonna of the Goldfinch

c. 1767/1770

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Painter, Venetian, 1696 - 1770

Shown from the chest up, a young woman faces us holding a nude baby in her arms in this vertical painting. They both have pale, peachy skin with pink cheeks. The woman has an oval face with a thin nose, and her coral-pink, bow mouth is closed. She looks down and to our left with dark eyes under arched brows. Her hair is covered by a white veil, and an azure-blue mantle is draped over her rose-pink robe. She cradles the plump child in her crossed arms. The baby has short, wavy, copper-red hair framing a round, flushed face with a button nose, peach lips, and hazel eyes that look at us. He holds a bird in his left hand, on our right. The bird has an off-white body with charcoal-gray wings and neck, and a strawberry-red face. A delicate chain wraps around the bird’s foot, and the baby holds the end in his other hand, up by his chest. A golden brown curtain covers most of the space behind the pair, except for a sliver of stone-gray wall to our left.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 32

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Marques de Castillo (or Castrillo), Madrid.[1] (Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York), at least 1929 to 1946.[2] C.S. Wadsworth Trust; (their sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 11 December 1948, no. 38, as Mother with Child Holding a Bird); (Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York).[3] Margherita Weber [b. 1915], Lugano, possibly since the 1948 sale;[4] sold 6 May 1997 through (Galerie Lingenauber, Düsseldorf, Germany) to NGA.
[1] The name is spelled both ways in various references, all in NGA curatorial files.
[2] Published with credit to Seligmann in references and exhibition catalogues between 1929 and 1946.
[3] The owner of the painting is identified as Seligmann in Antonio Morassi, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G.B. Tiepolo, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1962: 36, fig. 77, and Seligmann is listed as an owner after the 1948 sale in a 1997 advertisement by Galerie Lingenauber. It is possible Seligmann acted as the agent for the acquisition by Margherita Weber, if she acquired the painting at that sale.
[4] Charles Beddington, in a review of Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Diane De Grazia and Eric Garberson (Burlington Magazine, March 1997), states "The ex-Seligmann version is in a European private collection, in which it is said to have been for four decades..."

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1933

  • Opening Exhibition, Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, 1933, no. 84, as Madonna and Child Holding a Bird.

1936

  • Special Loan Exhibition: Venetian Painting of the Eighteenth Century, City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1936, no. 41, as Madonna and Child Holding a Bird.

1938

  • Exhibition of Venetian Painting from the Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1938, no. 59, repro., as Madonna and Child Holding a Bird.

  • Religious Art, an exhibition of fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth-century paintings; sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, rosaries, textiles, stained glass and prints, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1938-1939, no. 32.

  • Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Prints by the Two Tiepolos: Giambattista and Giandomenico, Art Institute of Chicago, 1938, no. 14, as Madonna and Child Holding a Bird.

1939

  • Central Illinois Art Exposition of Old and Modern Masters, Bloomington, Illinois, 1939.

  • Venetian Exhibition, Philbrook Art Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1939-1940.

1941

  • 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Society of Liberal Arts, Joslyn Memorial, Omaha, Nebraska, 1941.

Bibliography

2000

  • Kirsh, Andrea, and Rustin S. Levenson. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Materials and Meaning in the Fine Arts 1. New Haven, 2000: 74, color fig. 74.

2002

  • Pedrocco, Filippo. Giambattista Tiepolo. Milan, 2002: no. 283, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20178383

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