The Apparition of the Virgin

1530/1540

Girolamo da Carpi

Artist, Ferrarese, 1501 - 1556

A woman, Mary, sits surrounded by winged angels on a bank of clouds above a second woman who prays in front of a vast landscape in this vertical, arched painting. The women and angels all have pale skin and rosy cheeks. Mary and the angels take up the top two-thirds of the composition. Mary’s body is angled to our left, but she turns her face to us as she looks up. She wears a flax-yellow veil under an azure-blue mantle, which drapes over her shoulders and her ruby-red dress. Her hands are together in prayer, and her body, including one bare foot, is supported by the angels. Two older angels, like young adults, are at Mary’s feet and they look down. Both have long, wavy blond hair, and they wear robes in grass green or rust red. Two nude, child-like angels are to either side of Mary’s hips. Sixteen baby heads with blond hair and wings alongside their ears are nestled in the smoky-violet clouds around Mary. This group is lit brightly from our left but also backlit by the ring of angel heads. The older woman in the lower left corner of the composition wears a translucent veil and white head covering as she looks up, her hands also in prayer and holding a rosary. Her cheeks and jowls sag, and she wears a black dress. The grassy, shadowed landscape extends into the deep distance to a cluster of buildings in the lower right corner of the painting. Beyond the woman and smaller in scale, a man wearing a yellow cloak over a red robe reaches toward or releases a green snaking shape, perhaps a strip of fabric.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 22

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 199.4 x 131.1 cm (78 1/2 x 51 5/8 in.)
    framed: 225.1 x 158.8 x 11.8 cm (88 5/8 x 62 1/2 x 4 5/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.382

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned c. 1530/1540 by Giulia Muzzarelli, Ferrara. possibly Cardinale Luigi d'Este, Tivoli, by 1573 until at least 1580.[1] Borghese collection, Rome, as by Scarsellino.[2] Littlehales, London; (Littlehales sale, Christie's, London, 2 March 1804, no. 67, as by Palma Giovane, bought in). Robert Fagan and Charles Grignion, Rome; (Fagan and Grignion sale, Squibb, London, 29 May 1806, no. 50, as by Carracci, sale postponed from 26 May 1806). Charles John Howard, 17th earl of Suffolk [1804-1876], Charlton Park, Wiltshire, by 1854. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence and Rome); sold 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] The painting was possibly removed by Cardinale Luigi d'Este by 1573, or removed and taken to Rome when Ferrara passed to Papacy in 1598, or it may have reverted to the possession of the Muzzarelli family; see Girolamo Baruffaldi, Vite de' pittori e scultori ferrarese scritte dall'arciprete Girolamo Baruffaldi, con annotazioni, 2 vols., Ferrara, 1844: 1:385, and Alberto Serafini, Girolamo da Carpi, pittore e architetto ferrarese (1501-1556), Rome, 1915: 136.
[2] The painting was possibly given to Scipione Borghese by Battista Muzzarelli c. 1608, and was first recorded in the Borghese collection in a 1693 inventory; see the letter of 6 September 1988 from Burton B. Fredericksen, The Getty Provenance Index, in NGA curatorial files.
[3] According to Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, 1979: 1:226. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2070.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 87, no. 87, as The Assumption of the Virgin.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 249, repro. 121, as The Assumption of the Virgin.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 126, repro., as The Assumption of the Virgin.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 171, repro., as The Assumption of the Virgin.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 59, as The Assumption of the Virgin.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 51, repro.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 81-82, fig. 197, 199.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:189.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 92, 646.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 154, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:226-227, 2:pl. 153.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 178, repro.

1990

  • Turrill, Catherine. "Girolamo da Carpi's Muzzarelli Altarpiece." Studies in the History of Art 24 (1990):75-86, repro.

1998

  • Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. "Virgin/Virginity." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:905.

2007

  • Romani, Vittoria. "Sui disegni dei due Dossi." In Alessandro Ballarin, ed. Il Camerino delle Pitture di Alfonso I. 6: Dosso Dossi e La Pittura a Ferrara negli anni Del Ducato di Alfonso I. Atti del Convegno di Studio, Padova, Palazzo del Bo, 9-11 maggio 2001. Padua, 2007: 28.

  • Jellinek, Marco. “Giovio, Leoniceno, Dosso: un ritratto dimenticato.” In Alessandro Ballarin, ed. Il Camerino delle Pitture di Alfonso I. 6: Dosso Dossi e La Pittura a Ferrara negli anni Del Ducato di Alfonso I. Atti del Convegno di Studio, Padova, Palazzo del Bo, 9-11 maggio 2001. Padua, 2007: 142 n. 60 .

  • Fumagalli, Elena. “Sul collezionismo di dipinti ferraresi a Roma nel Seicento: riflessioni e aggiunte.” In Alessandro Ballarin, ed. Il Camerino delle Pitture di Alfonso I. 6: Dosso Dossi e La Pittura a Ferrara negli anni Del Ducato di Alfonso I. Atti del Convegno di Studio, Padova, Palazzo del Bo, 9-11 maggio 2001. Padua, 2007: 176-177.

2021

  • Pattanaro, Alessandra. Girolamo da Carpi. Milan, 2021: 76, 79-80, 138-139, 189, 218-221, cat. 39, figs. 31a-c.

Wikidata ID

Q20175971

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