The Expectant Madonna with Saint Joseph

c. 1425/1450

French 15th Century

Attributed to

A kneeling pregnant woman, an older, white-bearded man, a winged angel, and two people smaller in scale are angled to our left in this vertical panel, which has an arched top. All the people have pale skin. The pregnant woman, Mary, takes up most of the composition. She has an oval face with small features, a slight double chin, and pale pink lips. She has long, wavy blond hair under a gold headband, and a ring of Latin text creates a halo farther out from her head. Her midnight blue, almost black, cloak is lined with spring green and edged with gold. She grips the edge of her cloak with her right hand, farther from us, and holds her other hand over her belly. Smaller in scale, the winged angel is behind her and near her right shoulder. The angel holds one of Mary’s fingers and looks back at her face from the corner of light brown eyes. The angel wears a petal-pink robe under gold bands, has blond hair, and wings striped with canary yellow, dark blue, mauve pink, grass green, and pearl white. The man, Joseph, is the same scale as Mary. He is shown from the waist up behind a gold-brocaded red curtain, which is hung across the bottom of the composition behind Mary and the angel. Joseph’s gray hair is covered by a white cloth, and he has a brown and black hood over a raspberry-red robe. He clutches the end of a crutch and a green book in his hands at his chest. The final two people, smaller in scale than the angel, stand or kneel behind Mary. These two women wear gowns that are white down the front with scarlet-red sleeves and skirts. Where it falls down the back of the full dress, the red fabric is also lined with grass green. The gowns are edged with gold and have gold bands down the fronts. The woman closer to us stands with her hand clasped down in front of her, and the other rests one hand on her own belly and the other arm is wrapped around the first woman’s shoulders. Both have blond hair and look up at Mary. Tiny white and blue flowers, including violets, grow on green grass in the bottom quarter of the painting. The background above the curtain is gold, and two winged angels hold a tall crown in a bank of dark blue clouds in the curve of the arch. These angels are painted entirely in shades of crimson red.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on European walnut

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    image: 70.5 × 35 cm (27 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.)
    with integral frame: 83.5 × 47.63 × 7.62 cm (32 7/8 × 18 3/4 × 3 in.)
    framed (shadow box): 93.98 × 58.42 × 10.16 cm (37 × 23 × 4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1952.5.32

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Private collection, Lyon, France.[1] (Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); purchased July 1950 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] This is unverified, but cited in William Suida, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1945-1951, Washington, D.C., 1951: 174.
[2] Correspondence from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2166.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2012

  • The Road to Van Eyck, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2012 - 2013, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1951

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 174, no. 76, repro., as School of Amiens.

1954

  • Feudale, Caroline. "The Iconography of the Madonna del Parto." Marysas 7 (1954-1957): 13, fig.11.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 329, repro., as School of Amiens.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 7, as School of Amiens.

1966

  • Castelnuovo, Enrico. Il gotico internationale in Francia e nei Paesi Bassi. Milan, 1966: pl. 15.

  • Laclotte, Michel. Primitifs français. Paris, 1966: pl. 13.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 1, repro., as School of Amiens.

1974

  • Urbach, Zsuzsa. "'Dominus Possideit me...' (Prov. 8:22). Beitrag zur Ikonographie des Josephzweifels." Acta Historiae Artium 20 (1974): 236-237, fig. 31.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 10, repro., as School of Amiens.

1977

  • Sterling, Charles. "Un nouveau tableau bourguignon et les Limbourg." In Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss. 2 vols. New York, 1977: 424-426, fig. 11.

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 236-238, fig. 227.

1978

  • Foster, Marjory Bolger. "The Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art: 1400-1550." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1978: 89.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 125, no. 108, color repro., as by School of Amiens.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 23, repro.

  • Hall, Edwin, and Horst Uhr. "Aureola super Auream: Crowns and Related Symbols of Special Distinction for Saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance Iconography." The Art Bulletin 67, no. 4 (December 1985): 575, 577, fig. 6.

1987

  • Sterling, Charles. La peinture médiévale à Paris 1300-1500. 2 vols. Paris, 1987: 1:413-418, no. 58, fig. 294.

1993

  • Seidel, Linda. Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait: Stories of an Icon. Cambridge, 1993: 37, 100, fig. 21.

  • Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: fig. 204.

1994

  • Mills, John S., and Raymond White. The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects. Oxford and Boston, 1994: 171.

1997

  • St. Anthony Messenger. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1997: front cover, repro.

1998

  • Gersch-Nešic, Beth. “Pregnancy." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:753.

2001

  • Wilson, Carolyn C. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations. Philadelphia, 2001: 205 n. 70, 223 n. 188.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 42, 204-208, color repro.

  • Strool, Cyriel, ed. Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting in the Low Countries. 2 vols. Brussels, 2009: 2:168.

Inscriptions

center on edge of Madonna's mantle: ALELVI REGINA CELI LET[ARE ALLE]LVIA QVIA EVAM (Alleluia, Queen of Heaven, rejoice because He whom) [inscription is from the Regina Coeli, an Easter antiphon]

Wikidata ID

Q20173439

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