Madonna and Child in a Landscape

c. 1490/1500

Italian 15th Century

Artist

Giovanni Bellini

Related Artist, Venetian, c. 1430/1435 - 1516

Workshop of Giovanni Bellini

Attributed to

Shown from the hips up, a woman sits facing our left as she cradles a child in her lap in this vertical painting. A ginger-brown parapet spanning the lower edge of the composition separates them from us, and they have pale skin. A lavender cloth is wrapped across the woman’s forehead under an ivory-white veil that covers her hair. A cobalt-blue mantle drapes over her head and wraps around her brick-red robe. The mantle is edged in gold, and an ivory cloth is tucked into the neckline of the robe. Her eyes and head are lowered slightly to look at the child, and she supports his bottom with her left hand, on our right. Her right hand curves delicately around his shoulders. The nude, chubby child is cradled so he faces our right. He has delicate features, blond hair, and he looks up to look at the woman with this lips parted. He rests one hand on his belly with the first two fingers raised, and he touches his chin with his other hand. Beyond the pair, a landscape is filled with grass, dark green shrubs, and tall trees. Hills climb to two distant, beige-colored hills streaked with dark brown and dotted with trees. A cluster of sage-green buildings stands on the hill to our left. Puffy clouds float in a dark azure-blue sky overhead. The brown stone parapet is inscribed in the lower center, “JOANNES BELLINVS.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 74.2 x 58.3 cm (29 3/16 x 22 15/16 in.)
    framed: 110.8 x 88.6 cm (43 5/8 x 34 7/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1939.1.262

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Otto Wesendonk [1815-1896], Berlin; his heirs; lent 1909 to the city of Bonn;[1] returned to Wesendonk heirs; (Wesendonk sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 27 November 1935, no. 4). (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York); March sold 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] The painting was lent by the city of Bonn to the Provinzialmuseum, Bonn, from 1909 until 1935, and published in the museum's catalogue as number 6.
[2] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of twenty-four paintings, including NGA 1939.1.262, is dated 9 March 1937; the provenance is given as "Wesendonck[sic] Collection" (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474, Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1357.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1906

  • Loan for display with permanent collection, Provinzialmuseum, Bonn, 1909-1935.

Bibliography

1914

  • Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. Katalog der Gemäldegalerie: Vorwiegend Sammlung Wesendonk. Bonn, 1914, no. 9, repro.

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 88, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 21, no. 373, as by Giovanni Bellini.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 70, as by Giovanni Bellini.

1944

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 46, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 93, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 137, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 11, as by Giovanni Bellini.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 4, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 44, fig. 103.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 23, 646.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 22, repro., as by Giovanni Bellini and Assistant.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:55-56; 2:pl. 31, as by Giovanni Bellini and Assistant.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 43, repro.

1998

  • Tempestini, Anchise. Bellini e Belliniani in Romagna. Florence, 1998: 94.

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: 80-83, color repro.

2008

  • Lucco, Mauro, and Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, eds. Giovanni Bellini. Exh. cat. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2008: 234.

2023

  • Hochmann, Michel. “Giovanni Bellini et le métier de peintre à Venise.” In Neville Rowley, ed. Giovanni Bellini: Influences croisées. Exh. cat. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 2023: 33.

Inscriptions

by unknown hand, lower center on parapet: JOANNES . BELLINVS .

Wikidata ID

Q20174504

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