Bicci di Lorenzo

Florentine, 1373 - 1452

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A woman kneels and gazes at a nude baby boy half-sitting on the ground to the left in this vertical painting. A man with a gray beard and hair kneels to the left, and all three people have gold halos. Two more people wearing brown robes are under a wooden structure over a trough in the background. All the people have pale skin with rosy cheeks. Just to the right of center, the woman’s blond hair is covered by a light brown and blush-pink veil, and she bows her head to look at the boy with her hands pressed together at her chest. A marine-blue mantle is draped over her coral-pink robe. The nude child faces the woman and reaches his far hand to grasp the edge of her mantle. He leans back slightly, as if supported against the knees of the man behind him. The older man faces our right and wears a saffron-orange mantle draped over his spruce-blue robe. The wooden staff he holds with both hands rests against his near shoulder. The staff is cut off by the left edge of the composition. The ground beneath the child and woman is carpeted with dark green grasses and tiny tan, white, and dark blue flowers. The structure behind the trio has a shallowly pitched flat roof held up by slender beams. An ox and donkey eat at a wooden trough inside and are flanked by two pale-skinned men in robes. The man on the left has dark blond hair and the other has brown hair and rests a staff in the crook of one elbow. A tall, rocky mountain and muted blue-green sky fill the background.
Italian 15th Century, The Adoration of the Christ Child, c. 1440/1445, tempera on poplar panel, Timken Collection, 1960.6.25

The Adoration of the Christ Child

Italian 15th Century · c. 1440/1445 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1960.6.25

Bibliography

1878

  • Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architetti. Edited by Gaetano Milanesi. 9 vols. Florence, 1878-1885: 2(1878): 63-86.

1923

  • Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 9(1927):1-34.

1968

  • Micheletti, Emma. In DBI, 10(1968):327-330.

1979

  • Walsh, Barbara Buhler. The Fresco Paintings of Bicci di Lorenzo. Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington, 1979.

1986

  • Frosinini, Cecelia. "Il passaggio di gestione di una bottega fiorentina del primo Rinascimento: Lorenzo di Bicci e Bicci di Lorenzo." AntViv 25, no. 1 (1986): 5-15.

  • Petrucci, Francesca. In La pittura in Italia: Il Quattrocento. Ed. Federico Zeri. 2 vols. Milan, 1986, reprinted 1987: 2:585.

2002

  • Boskovits, Miklós. "Per Bicci di Lorenzo diseguatore." In Aux quatre vent. A Festschrift for Bert W. Meijer. Florence, 2002.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 138.