The Painting: Set in a verdant landscape, the Virgin rests on a hillock as she nurses her son. At left, a cityscape populates the horizon. The small painting is dominated by the figures of Mary and the infant Christ. The Virgin – richly dressed in a deep blue mantle edged in gold, her hair kept back by a sheer, twisting veil – gazes lovingly toward her infant son. Jesus, sitting quietly in his mother’s lap, reaches up to place his hand on Mary’s as she offers her breast. Paintings of the Virgin and Child like this one were very popular in the sixteenth century and many were produced to satisfy the increasing demand of the Antwerp open market.
As noted by Martha Wolff, the composition of the Lehman
Virgin and Child is connected to the tradition established by fifteenth-century painter Rogier van der Weyden.[1] However, toward the end of the fifteenth century, artists progressively incorporated landscape elements into their depictions of sacred figures, establishing and emphasizing a visual connection to the world of the viewer. In this case, the inclusion of a pastoral setting provides additional iconographic significance: showing the Virgin seated on the ground signals her humility to the viewer. In addition, the Christ Child rests on a white cloth that anticipates the shroud in which he will be wrapped after his Crucifixion, thus encouraging the viewer to reflect on his death and sacrifice for humankind.[2] The small size of this painting suggests that it was used for personal, private devotions. Its dimensions also leave open the possibility that the image may have been meant as an aid to worship during travel.
An analysis of the panel’s wood grain strengthens the possibility that the
Virgin and Child was painted together with other small images. Typically, the wood grain of the supporting panel corresponds to the orientation of the image: portrait-oriented paintings tend to be executed on panels whose wood grain runs vertically. However, this
Virgin and Child was created on a wooden support whose wood grain runs horizontally, against the alignment of the painted image. This may indicate that the work was one of many small paintings, possibly of the same subject, that were executed side-by-side on the same plank of wood, which was then sawn into individual pictures that were each given frames and put up for sale.[3] The lack of underdrawing further supports the hypothesis that this painting was part of a serial production strategy, as it indicates the use of a model that could have been used for the group at large.
Attribution and Date: The creator of this delicate image was aware of the artistic production of the Female Half-Lengths group. Given the similarities between this
Virgin and Child, the other Lehman painting of the same subject (
1975.1.123) and other paintings associated with the somewhat nebulous Half-Lengths group, the panel can be approximately dated to the mid-sixteenth century.[4] The panel reflects the artist’s keen awareness of market demands and ability to capitalize on the contemporary vogue for rapidly and efficiently produced small-scale depictions of Mary and her Son.
Nenagh Hathaway, 2018
[1] See Refs., Wolff, 1998, p. 117.
[2] These iconographical features are noted by Wolff, p. 117.
[3] A
barbe (a ridge of ground and paint mixture created when a painting is executed within an existing frame) is not present, meaning that the work was executed before a frame was applied.
[4] The so-called Female Half-Lengths group was initially thought to be the work of a single artist. However, this painter’s corpus expanded dramatically to include works that are stylistically inhomogeneous. The group is now widely considered to be composed of several different hands, working in close proximity and often from shared compositional models. See Ellen Konowitz, "The Master of the Female Half-Lengths Group, Eclecticism, and Novelty," in
Oud Holland Vol. 113, No. ½ (1999); pp. 1-12. Martha Wolff’s proposed connection to the "classicizing Madonna types" of Bernaert van Orley is rather unconvincing. See Refs., Wolff, 1998, 118.
References Katharine Baetjer.
European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born in or before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1980. (See p. 57, ill. p. 364).
Katharine Baetjer.
European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995. (See p. 272, ill.).
Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds.
From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 22 September-3 January, 1998-99. (See p. 406, ill.).
