Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Metropolitan Museum of Art


    • Madonna and Child, 1370s
    Paolo di Giovanni Fei (Italian, Sienese, active by 1369, died 1411)
    Tempera on wood, gold ground

    Overall, with engaged frame, 34 1/4 x 23 1/4 in. (87 x 59.1 cm); painted surface 27 x 16 7/8 in. (68.6 x 42.9 cm)
    Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941 (41.190.13)

    This independent panel of the Madonna nursing her child is among the masterpieces of fourteenth-century Sienese painting. Its composition was inspired by a work by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, but it is interpreted with Fei's special feeling for decorative richness and technical refinement. The engaged frame is original, as are the gold-backed, glass medallions with images of the Annunciation, saints, and the head of Christ. The picture dates from the 1370s. It may originally have stood on an altar in a small chapel in a church or in a domestic interior.

    Related


    This work has been published in the Museum's Bulletin or Journal. These articles may or may not represent the most current scholarship.
  • Christiansen, Keith. "Fourteenth-Century Italian Altarpieces." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 40, no. 1 (Summer, 1982).
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  • Madonna and Child, 1370s
    Paolo di Giovanni Fei (Italian, Sienese, active by 1369, died 1411)
    Tempera on wood, gold ground

    Overall, with engaged frame, 34 1/4 x 23 1/4 in. (87 x 59.1 cm); painted surface 27 x 16 7/8 in. (68.6 x 42.9 cm)
    Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941 (41.190.13)