Provenance

Bartolomeo della Nave

della Nave, Bartolomeo
Nave, Bartolomeo della

Italian

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Shown from the waist up behind a stone ledge, a young woman nestles a nude baby against her chest in this vertical painting. Both have pale skin with a slight, rosy blush on their cheeks, and both have halos painted as delicate gold rings around their heads. The woman’s shoulders are angled to our left, and she looks down at the baby in that direction with hooded eyes. She has a slender face, a long, straight nose, smooth cheeks, and her pale pink lips are closed. The neckline and the cuffs of her garnet-red, gold-edged gown peek out from beneath a dark, spruce-blue mantle that covers her head and wraps around her body. She rests the baby along the stone ledge and holds him in the crook of her right elbow, to our left. In her other hand, she holds a small object, perhaps an apple. The baby also touches the fruit as he lies back along her arm. He has curly, ash-blond hair, a petite nose, and chubby cheeks. He looks up at the woman or beyond her with parted, downturned lips. The pair are warmly lit from the upper left and set against a fern and olive-green landscape. Near the left edge of the painting, a church and steeple are silhouetted along the horizon, which comes just under halfway up the composition. In the sky above, a clear, pale blue horizon gives way first to puffy, cream-white clouds and then swirling clouds in tones of pine green and slate gray along the top of the picture. An inscription appears on the lower center of the ledge, “IDEM Z.B.”
Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child in a Landscape, c. 1480/1485, oil on panel, Ralph and Mary Booth Collection, 1946.19.1

Madonna and Child in a Landscape

Giovanni Bellini · c. 1480/1485 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1946.19.1

This painting shows a man from the knees up, seated and facing slightly to the right. He has pale skin, short, curly dark hair, a thin moustache, and a goatee. His expression is neutral as he gazes at us. He wears a dark red garment with voluminous sleeves, with a shining, polished gray breastplate over it. Draped over his shoulder and around his back is a light green cloak, and his legs also have silvery armor. In his left hand, he holds a long wooden staff. His other hand is raised, his fingers curled. He is positioned near a stone column or wall on the left, with a background on the right depicting a distant landscape under a blue sky, with blue fields and structures in the distance.
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Portrait of a Knight, c. 1525, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.74

Portrait of a Knight

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo · c. 1525 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.5.74