Virgin and Child Enthroned

The Picture: The Virgin, richly garbed, her bejeweled crown and blue halo designating her as Queen of Heaven, gazes affectionately at her lively infant child seated on her lap, his left hand grasping his foot, his right hand tight around his mother’s thumb. She is seated on a rectangular throne supported on arches over which is draped a red cloth of honor patterned in gold that is attached behind her to an elaborate, multistoried construction viewed in foreshortening. The rounded recess behind her contains a striking, pink-lavender niche that gives further prominence to the Virgin. Unusually, the Virgin’s halo is painted in rings of shades of blue rather than gilded. Although other examples are known of colored haloes in Bohemian art, the rings of blue inevitably suggest the celestial spheres familiar from medieval illustrations of ancient cosmographic texts as well as of Dante’s Divine Comedy (see, for example, in The Met’s collection, Giovanni di Paolo’s Creation 1975.1.31) This type of cosmographic map appears in a number of Venetian paintings, most significantly as a locating feature for the Coronation of the Virgin, as in an altarpiece by Paolo Veneziano in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. In The Met’s picture, the Virgin’s throne—the symbolic Solomonic Throne of Wisdom—is set within the Porch of Judgment, “where he [Solomon] might judge,” as described in I Kings 7:7; 10:18–20, and II Chronicles 9: 17–19. At the time of acquisition, in November 2019, the architectural background was entirely painted over to obtain a uniform, dark blue background (probably Prussian blue of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century) decorated with crudely pasted-on stars (see. fig. 1 above). X-ray imaging (see Klípa 2019) revealed the complexity of the architectural features, incorporating two projecting wings with loggias and balconies, the whole edifice surmounted by an arcade. However, the x-radiograph gave no sense either of the spatial impact or the colors, which cleaning in 2020 has revealed to be of exceptional richness. The projecting, double-story lateral wings of the structure have been conceived with a view to iconographic contrast. On the dexter side of the Virgin a ground floor porch supported on thin piers with a round arch is surmounted by a balcony or loggia. On the sinister side a squared arch on piers is surmounted by a rectangular grilled opening. The contrast between the two projecting wings is both emphatic and intentional and suggests as a possible iconography the separation of the righteous and the ungodly at the day of judgement. The recesses of this construction are inset with variegated marble. The shallow, pinkish-lavender niche within this recess picks up the pink of the Virgin’s throne and is repeated beyond the openings of the pale green arcade that crowns the entire structure, the top of which has unfortunately been trimmed, adding to the exceptional palette. As one would expect in a work of this date, the foreshortened features of this elaborate, multi-storied construction recede in an inconsistent and approximate way, but the spatial effect is very pronounced, with the receding lines of the edges of the throne and those of the lower story of the building giving visual emphasis to the Virgin’s womb.

Of exquisite facture, the picture combines the elegance as well as demonstrative humanity of French ivory carvings of the Virgin and Child with the spatial innovation of early-fourteenth-century painting in Italy. Its reverse is painted to simulate Bohemian green jasper. Unquestionably a deluxe work, it must have been destined for the private devotion of a prominent person associated with the courts of John of Luxembourg, “the Blind” (1296–1346) and his son Charles IV (1316–1378), King of Bohemia and, from 1355, Holy Roman Emperor. As rare as it is exquisite, it was unknown prior to its discovery in 2018 in the private collection of a family in Dole, France, and although its early history is unknown, it takes its place among the foundational pictures of the opening chapter of the great age of Bohemian painting in Prague. Indeed, in the confluence of French and Italian art it not only exemplifies Charles IV’s politics of culture that transformed Prague into a truly European capital, but it joins a handful of pictures that mark a key chapter in the history of Bohemian Gothic painting and the basis for a style that has (albeit problematically) come to be known as International Gothic.

The Attribution: Following its discovery, the picture was ascribed by Jan Klípa (2019) to the Master of Vyšší Brod or his circle, which is to say the artist responsible for a series of nine panels commissioned by Petr Rožmberk (Peter of Rosenberg; died 1347), who had served as valet at the court of Charles’s father, John of Luxembourg, and was subsequently Charles’s high chamberlain (fig. 2). This series is often but not universally considered the keystone of Bohemian painting in its early phase. Although The Met’s picture shares certain stylistic features with one or another of the panels from that series—in particular with the scene of the Adoration of the Magi, in which there are similarities with the morphology of the faces of the Virgin and the Christ Child as well as the child’s active pose and the profile of his upturned head—there are also significant differences. To begin with, The Met’s picture is incomparably more sophisticated in composition and treatment of space and reveals a delicacy in the execution that further sets it apart. There is an enhanced understanding of anatomy and the creation of an effect of physical presence, perhaps best evidenced in the drapery over the Virgin’s lap, which is articulated with an almost sculptural sense of volume together with an elegance in the rhythmic cadences of the hemline comparable to the finest French ivories and illuminations or, indeed, the work of Simone Martini that Charles and various members of his court would have seen during their multiple trips to Avignon. Moreover, the architecture that frames the figures differs decisively from what is found in the various panels of the Vyšší Brod Altarpiece in its spatial coherence and the fundamentally Giottesque character of the buildings. Rather, the spatial coherence aligns the picture with several other early Bohemian paintings: the Dormition of the Virgin in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 4) and the marvelous painting of the Virgin and Child Enthroned (the so-called Klodtzko Madonna or Glatz Madonna) in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (fig. 3). As Klípa has noted, there are similarities in the layout of the architecture with Paolo Veneziano’s scene of Saint Mark imprisoned, from his cover for the Pala d’Oro (the pala feriale), finished in 1345 (fig. 9). However, perhaps even closer analogies can be found in the work of the Tuscan Master of Saint Cecilia (fig. 11). These analogies underscore the fundamentally Giottesque moment reflected in The Met’s panel and suggest the possibility that the artist may have accompanied Charles on one of his trips to Italy or have been sent there to study Italian art. Additionally, there are some analogies of style with a painting of the Crucifixion (the so-called Kaufmann Crucifixion) in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; fig. 5). As with the figures in that work, so in The Met’s panel there is sophistication, elegance, and a more profound understanding of Italian and French models than is true of even the finest panels of the Vyšší Brod Altarpiece.

Beyond these comparisons, The Met’s picture seems to reveal a response to contemporary French illuminations, and in particular to those artists and works inspired by the great illuminator Jean Pucelle, as seen in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux in The Metropolitan Museum, dating from 1324–28 (54.1.2). Pucelle’s miniatures transmitted to French painting a direct knowledge of Sienese art. In a more general way, the faces and gestures of the figures in The Met’s panel, like those in the Kaufmann Crucifixion, can be seen to reflect the refined ideals of beauty prevalent in Parisian painting of the fourteenth century.

What seems abundantly clear is that The Met’s panel is the work of an artist of enormous talent and originality. The stylistic choices evident in it almost certainly reflect the cultural interests of the person for whom it was painted as well as those of the artist. It may be that one or more of the artists of the pictures discussed above were in some capacity involved in the workshop that produced the Vyšší Brod Altarpiece, but what must be underscored is that the differences among these remarkable paintings—and they are considerable—reflect individual responses to the diverse and rich international culture of Charles’s court, to which The Met’s panel adds a fundamentally new contribution.

Keith Christiansen 2020

For more information about the conservation of this work, see Michael Gallagher's posts of September 11, 2020, October 21, 2020, and March 9, 2021 on Instagram @metpaintingsconservation.

Evidence of hinges indicating that the panel likely formed the center of a small devotional triptych: The panel has been modestly trimmed on the vertical edges and more significantly reduced at the top. Fragments of iron fixtures on the edges of the panel can be partially located on the reverse and are clearly visible in the x-radiograph (see fig. 10 above and details below). One fragment that protrudes through the surface on the reverse has a square end profile suggesting a nail, while in two instances there is a second closely associated fragment, visible in the x-radiograph, which may indicate an original u-shaped hinging fixture; given the relatively even spacing of the fragments, this seems the most likely explanation. The panel was thus the center of a small devotional triptych. The placement of the fixtures also provides a sense of the original proportions of the panel before the top was trimmed. If the composition was rectangular and the hinging fixtures on either side were approximately central, it would suggest that 5 to 5.5 cm is missing at the top.

General position of the fragments:
Left side (reverse): 102 mm from top edge single, square profile iron nail(?) slightly protruding from surface
Right side (reverse): 98 mm from top edge partially visible, embedded iron nail (?), visible in x-radiograph together with second, possibly associated fragment
Bottom left corner (reverse): 11 mm from bottom edge one visible hole, one corresponding iron fragment visible in the x-radiograph
Bottom right corner (reverse): 9 and 7 mm from bottom edge two visible holes, two corresponding iron fragments visible in the x-radiograph

Michael Gallagher 2021

private collection, France (by early 1900s); by descent to private collection, France (until 2019; sale, Etude Cortot-Vregille-Bizouard, Dijon, December 1, 2018, no. 106, as “Ecole du XIXème siècle sur le goût de Cimabue," withdrawn; sale, Cortot et Associés, Dijon, November 30, 2019, as by the Master of Vyšší Brod, to Felipe Benappi for The Met)

Jan Klípa. "The Enthroned Madonna from Dijon: A Recently Discovered Painting from the Workshop of the Master of the Vyšší Brod Altarpiece." Umění / Art 67 (2019), pp. 215–25, fig. 1.

Une oeuvre exceptionnelle du Maître de Vissy Brod aux enchères. Eric Turquin. November 30, 2019, unpaginated, ill. (color, overall, details, and reverse) and fig. 3 (photo-montage showing overpainted background).

Keith Christiansen. "Un tableau bohémien et la cour de Charles IV à Prague." Revue de l'art no. 213 (2021), pp. 9–19, ill. p. 8 (color) and figs. 1–4 (x-radiograph and color, before and after conservation and reverse).

Keith Christiansen. "The Architecture in a Bohemian Panel in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Prospettiva no. 181–82 (January–April 2021), pp. 31–35, fig. 1 (color).

Stephan Wolohojian in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2020–2022." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 80 (Fall 2022), p. 16, ill. p. 16 and back cover (color, overall and detail).

Keith Christiansen. "The Fourteenth-Century Bohemian 'Virgin and Child Enthroned' at The Met: Some Preliminary Thoughts." Tributes to Maryan W. Ainsworth, Collaborative Spirit: Essays on Northern European Art, 1350–1650. Ed. Anna Koopstra et al. London, 2022, pp. 32–51, figs. 1–2 (color, before and after removal of background overpaint).