Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280

The painting shows the Madonna seated frontally on an elaborate, curved, two-tier, wooden throne of circular plan.[1]  [1]
This type of throne, familiar since late antiquity, had a particular diffusion in Byzantine representations of the thirteenth century, and Rebecca Corrie (2000) conjectured that the motif might have had “imperial associations,” with reference to Solomon’s throne, whose top is described as “round behind” (1 Kings 10:19). Rebecca Corrie, in The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 438 – ​439. The throne could also allude to the role of Mary herself as sedes sapientiae, seat of wisdom, since she supports the Son of God on her lap. See Jaroslav Folda, “Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 133 – ​134. On the throne in general, see Ilene H. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, 1972), 134 – ​203. She is supporting the blessing Christ child on her left arm according to the iconographic tradition of the Hodegetria.[2]  [2]
On the iconography of the Hodegetria, cf. Gregor Martin Lechner, “Maria,” in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 2005), 6:59 – ​71. On the cult of the image, see also Christine Angelidi and Titos Papamastorakis, “The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the Hodegon Monastery,” in The Mother of God: The Representation of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 373 – ​387. Mary is wearing a red mantle over an azure dress. The child is dressed in a salmon-colored tunic and blue mantle; he holds a red scroll in his left hand, supporting it on his lap.[3]  [3]
Rebecca Corrie, in The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 438, emphasized the rarity of the motif of the brilliant red mantle in Marian representations in Italian medieval art. For the motif of the Christ Child holding a scroll, see Klaus Wessel, “Buchrolle,” in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966), 1:784 – ​795. In the upper corners of the panel, at the height of the Virgin’s head, two medallions contain busts of two archangels [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Detail of left medallion with archangel, Byzantine thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople), Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280, tempera on linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Detail of right medallion with archangel, Byzantine thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople), Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280, tempera on linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, with their garments surmounted by loroi and with scepters and spheres in their hands.[4]  [4]
Cf. D. I. Pallas, “Himmel­smächte, Erzengel und Engel,” in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1978), 3:26 – ​32, 35– ​40.

It was Bernard BerensonBerenson, Bernard
 (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, ‘Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not at all.’ On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press (1921) who recognized the common authorship of this work and Enthroned Madonna and Child and who concluded — ​​though admitting he had no specialized knowledge of art of this cultural area — ​​that they were probably works executed in Constantinople around 1200.[5]  [5]
Bernard Berenson, “Due dipinti del decimosecondo secolo venuti da Costantinopoli,” Dedalo 2 (1921): 284–304. These conclusions retain their authority and continue to stir debate. Of the various alternative proposals expressed thus far, only those that have considered them the products of a thirteenth-century Roman or Venetian painter have been definitively abandoned.[6]  [6]
Osvald Sirén, “A Picture by Pietro Cavallini,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 32 (1918): 44 – ​47, attributed the Kahn Madonna alone to Pietro Cavallini. But since then only Raimond van Marle (1921, 1923, 1932) continued to support the hypothesis that the artist of the two paintings was Roman and associated with a cosmatesque workshop, though Walter Felicetti-­Liebenfels (1956) also admitted the possibility that the two panels might have been produced auf römischen Boden. Edward Garrison (1949), on the other hand, did not exclude the possibility that the paintings could have been Venetian in origin. See Raimond van Marle, La peinture romaine au Moyen-­Age (Strasbourg, 1921), 227 – ​228; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 1, From the 6th until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 503 – ​505; Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 1, Dal vi alla fine del XIII se­colo (The Hague, 1932), 519 – ​523; Walter Felicetti-­Liebenfels, Geschichte der byzantinischen Ikonenmalerei (Olten, Lausanne, 1956), 61; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 44, 48. Berenson’s opinion of the purely Byzantine figurative culture of the two panels still commands wide support,[7]  [7]
The Byzantine figurative culture of the two Madonnas is supported by Pietro Toesca, Il medioevo, 2 vols., Storia dell’arte italiana 1 (Turin, 1927), 2:1035 n. 39; Emilio Cecchi, Trecentisti senesi (Rome, 1928), 12, 125; Roger Fry, “Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà, L’iconografia della Madonna col bambino nella pittura italiana del Dugento (Siena, 1934), 43 – ​44; Helen Comstock, “A Dugento Panel at the Toledo Museum,” Connoisseur 98 (1936): 231; Helen Comstock, “The Connoisseur in America,” Connoisseur 126, no. 517 (1950): 52 – ​53; Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 87 – ​104; Otto Demus, Byzantine Art and the West (New York, 1970), 216 – ​218, 251 n. 147; Karl Maria Swoboda, “In den Jahren 1950 bis 1961 erschienene Werke zur byzantini­schen und weiteren ostchrist­lichen Kunst,” Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen 5 (1961 – ​1962): 148; Irmgard Hutter, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (New York, 1971), 156; Horst Waldemar Janson, History of Art, 2nd ed. (New York, 1977), 214; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:96 – ​99; Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icons or Altarpieces?” Center / ​National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 57 – ​58; Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Byzantines and Italians on Cyprus: Images of Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 352 n. 71. even though the dating of the paintings is in general placed slightly later, c. 1250 or within the second half of the thirteenth century.[8]  [8]
Subsequent to van Marle 1921, the great majority of art historians accepted this time span for the execution of the two paintings; only Duveen Pictures 1941 and NGA 1941 gave the date as early thirteenth century or, as in Demus 1958, as the first half of the century. John Walker (1963) reaffirmed the Berensonian date of c. 1200. See Raimond van Marle, La peinture romaine au Moyen-­Age (Strasbourg, 1921), 227 – ​228; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 1; National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 31; Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 87 – ​104; John Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1963), 64, 65, 297. George Martin Richter’s view that the master who painted them was a Greek active at the time of the Norman kings in Sicily remains isolated.[9]  [9]
George Martin Richter, “The New National Gallery in Washington,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177, proposed the paternity of a “Byzantine master at the court of Norman Kings in Sicily in the twelfth century” for the Mellon Madonna. But a Sicilian origin is still supported by those scholars who follow the opinion of Viktor Lazarev that the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas were painted in Sicily during the last quarter of the thirteenth century, by artists who had come from Byzantium or by their local disciples.[10]  [10]
Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, “Early Italo-­Byzantine Painting in Sicily,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 283 – ​284; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Istorija vizantijskoj živopisi: V druch tomach (Moscow, 1947 – ​1948), 192, 351 n. 116; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, “Constantinopoli e le scuole nazionali alla luce di nuove scoperte,” Arte veneta 13 – ​14 (1959 – ​1960): 11 – ​13; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), 318 – ​319, 347 n. 177. The scholar’s proposal was accepted by Paolo D’Ancona, Les primitifs italiens du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1935), 46 – ​47; David Talbot Rice, “Italian and Byzantine Painting in the Thirteenth Century,” Apollo 31 (1940): 89 – ​90; David Talbot Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London, 1968), 55; Ferdinando Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 80 – ​81; Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266 – ​1414, e un riesame dell’arte nell’età fridericiana (Rome, 1969), 22, 247, 354; Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 71 – ​73; Maria Calì, “L’arte in Puglia,” Arte antica e moderna 15 (1965): 389; Pina D’Elia and Michele D’Elia, eds., Icone di Puglia: Catalogo della Mostra (Bari, 1969), no. 33; Victor Ieronim Stoichita, Ucenicia lui Duccio di Buoninsegna (Bucharest, 1976), 30 – ​34, 149 – ​150; Anna Tambini, Pittura dall’Alto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forlì (Faenza, 1982), 32 – ​33; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, “Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento a Napoli e nel Meridione,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:463; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, “Sicilia: Pittura e miniatura,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1999), 10:619 – ​620; Maria Pia Di Dario Guida, Icone di Calabria e altre icone meridionali, 2nd ed. (Messina, 1993), 119, 121; Francesca Campagna Cicala, “Messina: Scultura, pittura, miniatura e arti suntuarie,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:353; Tania Velmans, Vojislav Korać, and Marica Šuput, Bisanzio: Lo splendore dell’arte monumentale (Milan, 1999), 202. Some authorities on Byzantine art doubt, however, that the two Madonnas in the National Gallery of Art could have been executed by masters of Byzantine origin.[11]  [11]
Only for the Mellon Madonna did Robert Byron and David Talbot Rice (1930) exclude the possibility that it might have been the work of a Byzantine artist, while Philip Schweinfurth (1930) and Hans Belting (1982 and 1990) rejected the hypothesis of Byzantine authorship for both paintings. See Robert Byron and David Talbot Rice, The Birth of Western Painting (London, 1930), 101 n. 1; Philipp Schweinfurth, Geschichte der russischen Malerei im Mittelalter (The Hague, 1930), 377 – ​379; Hans Belting, “Introduzione,” in Il medio oriente e l’occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, September 10 – ​18, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), 4 – ​5; Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 7 – ​22; Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 33, 417, 420. In their view, also endorsed by some experts of Italian medieval painting, the characteristics of the two panels pre­suppose patrons with liturgical needs, iconographic precedents, and cultural traditions consistent with those of the Latin West. Further, they have asserted that the two paintings probably were executed in Tuscany.[12]  [12]
Sergio Bettini (1954) proposed that the artist of both panels was a Florentine mosaicist who had been trained in a Byzantine milieu. Though he considered both panels to have been produced in Constantinople, James H. Stubblebine (1966) detected in them the influence of Duccio. Belting (“Introduzione,” 1982) first proposed that the two paintings were executed in Italy, under the influence of Cimabue and Duccio; later that year (“The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas”) he conjectured that the Kahn Madonna probably had been executed in the area of Pisa, whereas the Mellon Madonna was the work of a local imitator. Hendrik W. van Os, Dillian Gordon, and Hayden B. J. Maginnis accepted this opinion. Joseph Polzer (1999 and 2002), on the basis of the incised decoration of the halos of the Kahn Madonna, which he thought was derived from the halo ornament of Tuscan paintings of the final decades of the thirteenth century, asserted that the two panels in the National Gallery of Art and some others stylistically akin to them were produced in Tuscany, probably in Siena, in the years 1280 – ​1320. The decorative repertoire published by Pasut 2003 identified the presence of the ornamental motif that Polzer had studied in various paintings executed in Tuscany, and also in other regions of Italy, in the third quarter of the thirteenth century, while Rebecca Corrie (2005) went further and identified its diffusion from Russia to Bulgaria and from Cyprus to Sicily, from the early years of the thirteenth century onwards. Sergio Bettini, “I mosaici dell’atrio di San Marco e il loro seguito,” Arte veneta 8 (1954): 32, n. 6; James H. Stubblebine, “Two Byzantine Madonnas from Calahorra, Spain,” The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 379 – ​381; Hans Belting, “Introduzione,” in Il medio oriente e l’occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, September 10 – ​18, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), 4 – ​5; Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 7 – ​22; Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 1215 – ​1460: Form, Content, Function, vol. 1, 1215 – ​1344 (Groningen, 1984), 23, 26; Dillian Gordon, “Duccio di Buoninsegna,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 9:341; Hayden B. J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997), 77; Joseph Polzer, “Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle Ages, 1,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 85; Joseph Polzer, “Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle Ages, 2,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 167 – ​182; Joseph Polzer, “The ‘Byzantine’ Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Concerning Their Chronology, Place of Origin, and Method of Analysis,” Arte cristiana 90 (2002): 401 – ​410; Francesca Pasut, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: Supplementary Volume, vol. 2, Ornamental Painting in Italy (1250 – ​1310): An Illustrated Index, ed. Miklós Bosko­vits, new ed. (Florence, 2003), 125 n. 20; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 296. Other scholars have supported the thesis that the two panels were painted in Cyprus or in Thessaloniki.[13]  [13]
Aligning himself with those who considered the Mellon and Kahn Madonnas as the works of two different hands (see also notes 16, 17, and 24), Jaroslav Folda (1995) argued that the Kahn Madonna was painted by a Greek painter of Constantinople, whereas its companion panel dated, in his view, “somewhat later” and was executed in an “as yet undetermined Levantine location.” See Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-­Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Prince­ton, 1995), 501 – ​506. Returning to the question later (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005), Folda specified Cyprus as the most probable location for the execution of the Mellon Madonna, though not excluding other possible candidates (Frankish Greece, Crusader states). For her part Rebecca Corrie, having pointed out the Byzantine origin of the types of throne present in the two versions of the Madonna in the National Gallery of Art (1985), later came to the conclusion (1996, 2000, 2005) that “the two Washington panels fit well into Byzantine paintings” and that they were probably the work of “artists trained at Constantinople or Thessaloniki.” Jaroslav Folda, in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843 – ​1261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom (New York, 1997), 391, 396 – ​397; Jaroslav Folda, “Reflections on the Mellon Madonna as a Work of Crusader Art,” in Dei gesta per Francos: Études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard / Crusade Studies in Honour of Jean Richard, ed. Michel Balad, Benjamin Kedar, and Jonathan Riley-­Smith (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2001), 361 – ​371; Jaroslav Folda, “Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 127 – ​129, 131 – ​135, 139; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187 – ​1291 (Cambridge, 2005), 457 – ​458, 557; Rebecca W. Corrie, “Tuscan Madonnas and Byzantine Masters,” in Abstracts and Program Statements for Art History Sessions: Seventy-­Third Annual Meeting, College Art Association of America, February 14 – ​16, 1985, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 1985), 46; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Perugia Triptych and the Transmission of Byzantine Maniera Greca,” in Acts: XVIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, vol. 3, Art History, Architecture, Music, ed. Ihor Ševčenko, Gennady G. Litavrin, and Walter K. Hanak (Moscow, 1996), 41; Rebecca Corrie, in The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 438 – ​439; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293 – ​300.

Opinions thus vary widely regarding the cultural origin of this painting and the Enthroned Madonna and Child, but significant convergences can be ascertained on some points. It seems generally recognized, for example, that the Kahn Madonna is the earlier of the two images and that it was painted by an artist trained in Byzantium, although possibly at work far from his homeland, and for patrons of Western culture. The close stylistic affinities between the two panels are also commonly recognized, even if the Mellon Madonna is often indicated as the work of a different hand. In more recent years, however, various scholars have again proposed their common authorship.[14]  [14]
Cf. Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 58 – ​59, and Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 299, who considered the two paintings as having come “from the same workshop” and “realized at about the same time,” but not by the same artist.

The sudden appearance of the two panels in tandem and their common provenance from a small Spanish town have been considered strange;[15]  [15]
Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 7, 21 n. 3, was the first to insinuate doubts about the provenance from Calahorra, indicating manuscript notes of E. B. Garrison, not otherwise specified, as his source for these doubts. Robin Cormack mentioned these notes, presumably found in the Garrison archive, now in the Courtauld Institute in London, during an apparently unpublished lecture given at Dumbarton Oaks in 1979. In essence, Belting claimed, “the dealer Weissberger had fabricated this provenance,” i.e., from Calahorra. What Belting asserted as a certainty is, however, it seems to me, no more than a suspicion, although often accepted by other scholars, e.g., Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-­Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 503; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293. indeed, their alleged provenance from a church in Calahorra is authenticated, as far as I know, by no document. On the other hand, the fact that at least in 1912 the two paintings were reported together on the Madrid art market supports a Spanish provenance or at least makes it probable that they were purchased in Spain, perhaps even from the same owner. It would seem strange, in any case, to invent a provenance from Calahorra for paintings allegedly executed by Cimabue or by Cavallini. Various reasons have been adduced to cast doubt on whether both panels could have been executed by the same artist. Roger Fry was the first to emphasize the different structure and pictorial treatment of the two thrones.[16]  [16]
Roger Fry, “Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245: “The Carl Hamilton picture [Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, in comparison with the Kahn Madonna] seems to be more Byzantine​ . . . ​particularly in the purely linear treatment of the throne." Many years later, Hans Belting cited the results of technical examinations by Ann Hoenigswald in support of his thesis that “most of the analogies which link the Mellon Madonna to the Kahn Madonna must​ . . . ​be interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the artist of the former to imitate the latter or a similar work.”[17]  [17]
Belting’s later scholarship was published alongside a paper by Ann Hoenigswald (1982), who listed various disparities she observed in the respective techniques of the two paintings. In the Kahn Madonna, “the flesh tones seem to have been built upon an underlying green tone which provides the deepest shadows. This is not apparent​ . . . ​in the Mellon panel, where the shadow was mixed into the flesh tone.” Moreover, “the shadow formed by the folds of the blue robe on the Kahn Madonna is implied by the chrysography. . . . In the Mellon panel, however, there is a two-toned system of a lighter and darker blue juxtaposed with gold outline.” According to Hoenigswald, therefore, the “comparisons of technique​ . . . ​are strong indications that the panels were not the work of the same artist.” Hans Belting, “Introduzione,” in Il medio oriente e l’occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, September 10 – ​18, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), 4 – ​5; Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 7 – ​22; Ann Hoenigswald, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: Technical Investigation,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 27, 28, 29. Several scholars have accepted Belting’s conclusions, although it is fair to say that, in order to exclude the use of different technical procedures by the same painter, one would first need the evidence of systematic analyses — ​​hitherto unavailable — ​​of the pictorial technique of a particular painter in various phases of his career. How can we exclude a priori the possibility of an artist having developed, or having experimented with, new solutions, or different technical procedures, in the course of his career?[18]  [18]
We do not have at our disposal sufficient data to determine whether, and to what degree, the technique of a painter of this period could alter in the course of years or decades. While we may freely admit that there are some technical differences in the execution of the two Madonnas in the Gallery, we cannot infer from this that they are the work of different hands. Still less can any such conviction dispense us from a careful stylistic analysis of the two images.

The claim is made occasionally that modern restoration drastically altered the Mellon Madonna. A comparison of photographs taken c. 1920 with those taken in more recent times proves indeed that modern conservation measures have been extensive. Yet many parts of the painting that are still clearly legible disclose close resemblances with Enthroned Madonna and Child. The affinities concern not only the formal treatment of such details as the faces of the two images of Mary [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople), Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280, tempera on linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople), Enthroned Madonna and Child, c. 1250/1275, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Otto H. Kahn or the delicately poetic interpretation of the main personages, but also the high, sustained qualitative level of the execution of both panels, the skilful use of chrysography to articulate and give relief to the bodies,[19]  [19]
Though observing differences between the chrysography of the Kahn Madonna and the Mellon Madonna (in which he detected an “etwas kühlen Klassizismus” [a somewhat cool classicism], 91), Otto Demus justly emphasized that both were characterized by a “Formverständnis” (understanding of form, 93) absent from contemporary Italian paintings. Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 90 – ​91, 93 – ​94. and some peculiar incongruities in the perspective of the thrones. In the Kahn Madonna the artist proposes a rectangular wooden throne with a very elaborate structure and tries to make it illusionistically credible, not only by the three-dimensional modeling of the individual components but also by making the right rear leg visible through the perforations. But he fails to remove incongruities in perspective: while the throne itself is seen from the left, the four legs are represented as if seen from the other side. In the Mellon Madonna, apart from the painter’s difficulty in convincingly rendering the foreshortening of the circular seat, it may be noted once again that the two front legs are seen from opposite directions: one from the left, the other from the right. It is difficult to think that all this is merely the consequence of the painter’s effort to follow his model, not least because the Mellon Madonna is decidedly not a copy of the other. The two images are in fact different in type and perhaps also in function. Their common provenance seems to suggest that they were executed for the same patron but belong to two different phases of the artist’s career and were intended to satisfy different needs.[20]  [20]
Reflecting on the different functions of the two Madonnas in the National Gallery of Art, Jaroslav Folda (1995) conjectured that the Kahn Madonna was intended as a large processional icon, whereas the other panel might have been “one wing of a large diptych for private or public use.” Folda also confirmed these hypotheses in later contributions, specifying (2002) that the Kahn Madonna “can be easily understood as a large processional icon that could have been placed on a proskynetarion or positioned behind an altar in a Latin church.” Victor M. Schmidt (1996) accepted this proposal, though he did not exclude that the Mellon Madonna might originally have been a self-standing icon. According to Rebecca Corrie (2005), “a panel such as the Mellon Madonna might have been made for private devotion, or even as part of an iconostasis perhaps,” while the Kahn Madonna, in view of its considerable size, “could have functioned in a pair of despotic icons.” Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-­Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 505 – ​506; Jaroslav Folda, “Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 127 – ​128; Victor M. Schmidt, “Die Funktionen der Tafelbilder mit der thronenden Madonna in der Malerei des Duecento,” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 55 (1996): 60 – ​63; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 295.

Of the comparisons hitherto proposed, the one indicated by Otto Demus, of the Madonna of the Deesis in the southern gallery of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine second half of the thirteenth century, Deesis Mosaic of the South Gallery, c. 1260/1280, gold and glass mosaic, Hagia Sophia Museum, Istanbul. © Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY, a mosaic probably executed immediately after the Byzantine reconquest of Constantinople in 1261,[21]  [21]
See Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 95 – ​97. Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), 198, and others suggested a date in the twelfth century, but a dating shortly after 1261 is now more prevalent, e.g., Robin Cormack, “The Mother of God in the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople,” in The Mother of God: The Representation of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 118 – ​119; Tania Velmans, “La pittura bizantina: Mosaici, affreschi, icone, miniature,” in Bisanzio, Costantinopoli, Istanbul, ed. Tania Velmans (Milan, 2008), 182. seems particularly significant in support of the Constantinopolitan culture of the artist of the two paintings. However, other images too, whether in the form of frescoes, panels, or miniatures,[22]  [22]
“Selbst wenn die Deesis der Hagia Sophia das einzige erhaltene Konstantinopler Werk dieser Epoche wäre” — ​​rightly observed Demus — ​​“müsste die Konfrontation mit ihr genügen, um den hauptstädtischen Ursprung der Kahn- wie der Mellon-­Madonna zweifelsfrei darzutun” (Even if the Deesis of Hagia Sophia were the only surviving Constantinopolitan work of the period, a comparison with the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas would be enough to unequivocally confirm their origins in the capital). Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 97. However, the same scholar listed some other similar works, including the frescoes in the Saint Demetrios Cathedral in Vladimir, Russia (1194 – ​1199), in which he saw the work of both Constantinopolitan masters and their Russian disciples as a kind of anticipation of some aspects of the art developed in the first decades of the thirteenth century. For his part, Hans Belting (1982) cited the Madonna of the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos and some other later icons dating to the fourteenth century, though it is fair to say that these reveal a stylistic phase a good deal more advanced than the panels in the National Gallery of Art; Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 10 – ​11. Jaroslav Folda (1995) proposed that “the Mellon Madonna master must have seen a Byzantine example such as that in Paris, Bibl. Nat. ms. gr. 54” and thus used as his model the miniatures of an evangelistary; Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-­Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 504. But, in his view, the image in the Gallery especially had close affinities with some Crusader panel paintings in Cyprus (Madonna and Child and Saint Nicholas with some scenes from his life, both in the Byzantine Museum at Nicosia). For other analogous paintings and miniatures, see Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293 – ​303. The present writer finds significant affinities between the two Washington panels and some icons preserved in the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai. These paintings are of uncertain provenance, but they can be assumed to have been executed in the second half of the thirteenth century and in Constantinople, to judge from their very sustained quality of execution and accomplished pictorial technique: I refer in particular to the Archangel Michael, the Arch­angel Gabriel, and a half-length Madonna in Prayer. See, respectively, Konstantinos A. Manafis, ed., Sinai: Treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine (Athens, 1990), 170, pl. 41; Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261 – ​1557) (New Haven, 2004), 384 – ​385, no. 240; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187 – ​1291 (Cambridge, 2005), 222, fig. 126. seem to suggest a similar origin of the two Madonnas, the execution of which is unlikely to have been much later than the Deesis in Hagia Sophia. None of the works hitherto compared with the Byzantine panels in the Gallery in fact seems so close to them as this mosaic in Hagia Sophia, both in facial type and in the extreme delicacy of the modeling; this close kinship represents, in my view, the confirmation — ​​despite frequent denials — ​​of the common authorship of the two paintings.[23]  [23]
Following Fry 1931 and D’Ancona 1935, the proposition that the two Madonnas might have been produced in the same workshop was explicitly denied by Belting 1982, 1990; Hoenigswald 1982; Folda 1987, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2005; Polzer 1999, 2002; and Kirsch and Levenson 2000. See Roger Fry, “Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Paolo D’Ancona, Les primitifs italiens du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1935), 46 – ​47; Hans Belting, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 7 – ​22; Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 33, 417, 420; Ann Hoenigswald, “The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: Technical Investigation,” Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 25 – ​31; Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icons or Altarpieces?” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 57 – ​58; Jaroslav Folda, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-­Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 501 – ​510; Jaroslav Folda, in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843 – ​1261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom (New York, 1997), 391, 396 – ​397; Jaroslav Folda, “Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 123 – ​145; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187 – ​1291 (Cambridge, 2005), 457 – ​458, 557; Joseph Polzer, “Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle Ages, 1,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 85; Joseph Polzer, “Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle Ages, 2,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 167 – ​182; Joseph Polzer, “The ‘Byzantine’ Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Concerning their Chronology, Place of Origin, and Method of Analysis,” Arte cristiana 90 (2002): 401 – ​410; Andrea Kirsh and Rustin S. Levenson, Seeing through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies (New Haven and London, 2000), 180. It should further be recalled that Viktor Lazarev (1933, 1947, 1959 – ​1960, 1967) consistently spoke of two masters as the authors of the Kahn and Hamilton (Mellon) Madonnas, though he recognized that their figurative culture had a common source. See Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, “Early Italo-­Byzantine Painting in Sicily,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 283 – ​284; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Istorija vizantijskoj živopisi: V druch tomach (Moscow, 1947 – ​1948), 192, 351 n. 116; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, “Constantinopoli e le scuole nazionali alla luce di nuove scoperte,” Arte veneta 13 – ​14 (1959 – ​1960): 11 – ​13; Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), 318 – ​319, 347 n. 117.

It is understandable that some decorative forms used in the panels — ​​for example, the elaborate incised decoration of the halos of the Kahn Madonna and the type of throne — ​​should have suggested the artist’s contact with Tuscan figurative culture. But closer analysis will show that the decorative motifs of the halos,[24]  [24]
See Francesca Pasut, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: Supplementary Volume, vol. 2, Ornamental Painting in Italy (1250 – ​1310): An Illustrated Index, ed. Miklós Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 2003), 125 n. 20; Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293 – ​303. as well as the wooden thrones of the Washington paintings, are well known in Byzantine art. The genre of the Madonna and Child Enthroned on a monumental scale, particularly popular in thirteenth-century Tuscany, was also well known in contemporary central and southern Italian painting and in that of the Venetian and Adriatic area.[25]  [25]
Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, “New Light on the Problem of the Pisan School,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 68 (1936): 61 – ​73, followed by Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 93, placed the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas in relation with the Madonna and Child Enthroned, no. 240 in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, which he considered the work of a Pisan master. In my view, the painting in Moscow is a precious and rare example of Venetian painting of the third quarter of the thirteenth century, which, like the later but still thirteenth-century two-sided panel in the monastery of Santa Maria at Zadar, exemplifies knowledge and diffusion of this genre in the Venetian and Adriatic regions. See Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 1100 – ​1270 (Florence, 1993), 134 n. 284; Miklós Boskovits, Andrei Bliznukov, and Rodolfo Maffeis, “Studi recenti sulla pittura italiana in Russia: Il nuovo catalogo del Museo Puškin,” Arte cristiana 92 (2004): 113 – ​114; and Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261 – ​1557) (New Haven, 2004), 497 – ​498. A throne of very effective perspective rendering and of similar type also appears in the large panel in the basilica of San Nicola at Bari; it, too, sometimes is compared with the two paintings in the National Gallery of Art. See Pina D’Elia and Michele D’Elia, eds., Icone di Puglia: Catalogo della Mostra (Bari, 1969), no. 33. The Bari icon, which to judge from its style ought to be the work of a master of Byzantine formation, again dating to the thirteenth century, is the forerunner of a type of Marian image that would become very widespread in southern Italy, as shown for instance by the Madonna usually attributed to Montano d’Arezzo in the Sanctuary of Montevergine near Avellino; Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266 – ​1414, e un riesame dell’arte nell’età fridericiana (Rome, 1969), 102 – ​107. On the thrones of the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas, see the analogies quoted by Rebecca W. Corrie, “The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 296. Influenced, in its realistic elements, by icons imported from the various centers of Byzantine art and by products of so-called Crusader art,[26]  [26]
On the relations of the two Washington Madonnas with works of Crusader art, see in particular Jaroslav Folda, “Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 129 – ​138. To the list of panels by artists of Byzantine formation that depict, perhaps at the request of Western donors, the full-length Madonna and Child Enthroned, I would add that in the Museo Nazionale of Ravenna, cf. Viktor Nikitič Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967) fig. 428, and that in the Gemâldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (no. 23), usually left in anonymity and considered of fourteenth-century date. However, Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 116, significantly proposed it as a work of the “school of Giunta Pisano.” these large images were at times commissioned from artists of Byzantine origin and training: this seems to me the case of the Madonna in the Basilica of San Nicola at Bari.[27]  [27]
See note 25 above. It seems plausible to suggest a similar origin for the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas, though these are distinguished from the icon in Bari by the particular accomplishment of their execution and by their stylistic kinship with works having at least a probable Constantinopolitan origin. In conclusion, therefore, while admitting that the origin of these paintings will probably long remain a bone of contention, the present state of our knowledge suggests that they were produced in a workshop culturally bound to Constantinople in years not long before or not long after 1261, the presumed date of the image they most closely resemble, the mosaic in Hagia Sophia.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

Associated Names