The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Children

c. 1490/1493

Ercole de' Roberti

Artist, Ferrarese, c. 1455/1456 - 1496

Ercole de' Roberti

Attributed to

A woman holds the hands of two nude children in front of a crimson-red cloth in this vertical painting. All three have pale skin and brown hair. The woman wears a forest-green dress with voluminous sleeves and a gauzy white headdress that wraps around her hair and is fastened with a band across her forehead. She stands crouching with one foot extended slightly forward in a sandal, surrounded by broken chunks of masonry and bits of burning logs. Her body faces us but she turns her head to the right. Her mouth is wide open, and her eyes cut back to our left. The woman clutches the children’s hands in both of her own. The child to our left turns away from us and reaches one hand up to touch the back of the woman’s hand. The child on the right twists away from the woman, eyes squinted up and to the right and mouth open. Behind them, fold lines create a grid across the red cloth. Slivers of grass and blue sky line each side of the composition.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 13

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on poplar panel

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 47.3 x 30.6 cm (18 5/8 x 12 1/16 in.)
    framed: 67 x 50.2 x 4.4 cm (26 3/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 3/4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1965.7.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Probably commissioned by Eleonora of Aragon, duchess of Ferrara [1450-1493]. Count Étienne Méjan [secretary to Eugène Beauharnais], Milan, by 1812.[1] Count d'Arache [possibly Count Bertolazone d'Arache], Turin, by 1849;[2] bequest 1857 to Count Castellani, Turin.[3] Sir John Charles Robinson [1824-1913], London, by 1861; probably sold to Robert Napier, West Shandon, Strathclyde, Scotland, by 1865;[4] (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 April 1877, no. 422, as The Nurse Saving the Children of Medea by Andrea Mantegna); repurchased by Sir John Charles Robinson, London; purchased 1878 by Sir Francis Cook, 1st bt. [1817-1901], Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey;[5] by inheritance to his son, Sir Frederick Lucas Cook, 2nd bt. [1844-1920], Doughty House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Frederick Herbert Cook, 3rd bt. [1868-1939], Doughty House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Francis Ferdinand Maurice Cook, 4th bt. [1907-1978], Doughty House, and Cothay Manor, Somerset; sold August 1964 to (S. & R. Rosenberg, London);[6] (Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York); purchased 27 May 1965 by NGA.
[1] Gaetano Zancon, Galleria inedita raccolta da privati gabinetti Milanesi, Milan, 1812: no. 5.
[2] Pietro Selvatico in Vasari, ed. Le Monnier, 5 (1849): 188. Otto Mündler saw the painting in April and October 1856; see "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler," ed. Carol Togneri Dowd, Walpole Society 51 (1985): 135, 180, 278, 297.
[3] The following is inscribed on the cradle: "Andrea Mantegna, della collezione del Conte de Mejan, e poi da quella del Conte Castellani di Torino" (see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:410).
[4] The catalogue of the Napier collection, mainly compiled by J.C. Robinson, was privately printed in London in 1865 (see Tancred Borenius, A Catalogue of the Paintings at Doughty House, Richmond, and Elsewhere in the Collection of Sir Frederick Cook, 3 vols., London, 1913-1915: 1[1913]:no. 119). Robinson most likely sold the painting to Napier, a friend.
[5] Borenius 1913, 1(1913):no. 119.
[6] See copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, from the Cook Collection Archive in care of John Somerville, England.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1861

  • Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, French, and English Masters, British Institution, London, 1861, no. 8, as The Children of Medea rescued by the Nurse by Andrea Mantegna.

1894

  • Exhibition of Pictures, Drawings & Photographs of Works of the School of Ferrara-Bologna, 1440-1540, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1894, no. 7, as Medea and Her Children (?) attributed to Ercole de' Roberti.

1920

  • Winter Exhibition, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1920-1921.

1930

  • Exhibition of Italian Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1930, no. 207 (no. 212 in commemorative catalogue published 1931; no. 80 in souvenir catalogue).

1947

  • Loan for display with permanent collection, The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England, 1947-1958.

1964

  • Loan for display with permanent collection, Manchester Art Gallery, England, 1964.

1969

  • In Memoriam, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1969, unnumbered checklist.

1999

  • Ercole de'Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1999, no. VI, repro.

Bibliography

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 115.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 102, repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:122.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 308, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:408-410; 2:pl. 287.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 118, no. 103, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 354, repro.

  • Mündler, Otto. "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler." Ed. Carol Togneri Dowd. Walpole Society 51 (1985): 135, 179, 180, 278, 297.

1991

  • Morandotti, Alessandro. "La fortuna collezionistica della pittura gotica e rinascimentale fra Ottocento e Novecento." In Mauro Natale, ed. Pittura italiana dal '300 al '500. Milan, 1991: fig. 9.

1992

  • Manca, Joseph. The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti. Cambridge, 1992: 14, 59-61, 133-136, fig. 17a.

1993

  • Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: 500.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2003: 607-612, color repro.

2004

  • Danziger, Elon. "The Cook Collection: Its Founder and Its Inheritors." The Burlington Magazine 146, no. 1216 (July 2004): 444-458.

2009

  • Roberts, Perri Lee. Corpus of Early Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections: The South. 3 vols. Athens, GA, 2009: 2:294.

2023

  • Kondziella, Martha. Sodoma: Die Tafel- und Leinwanbilder. Merzhausen, 2023: 316 n. 1860.

Wikidata ID

Q3860075

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