The Madonna and Child

Once thought by Bernard Berenson to be by Anton Maria da Carpi (Berenson, loc. cit.) the present work is one of many studio versions of this composition all dated by Peter Humfrey to circa 1485-6 (op. cit., nos. 168-75, pp. 168-70, pls. 3a-5d). The primary example is in the John G. Johnson Collection, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Inv. no. 176 (ibid., p. 140-1, no. 122, pl. 2). That painting which appears to be the only autograph version, is regarded as one of Cima's earliest works dateable to circa 1485-6, though dated slightly later by Bernard Berenson to circa 1494 (B. Berenson, Venetian Painting in America, 1916, pp. 197-9). This composition is one of the most frequently reproduced of all his Madonna types, revealing the influence of the late style of Giovanni Bellini which Pallucchini (R. Pallucchini, Una Madonna di Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, in Rivista d'Arte, XIII, 1931, pp. 236-8) speculates may be dependent on a lost panel by Bellini or Antonello da Messina painted in the 1470's or early 1480's. The present work, with its recessional landscape and travelling figures, of all the versions most closely follows the Johnson original. Other workshop replicas of this painting include those formerly in the the Beekman Winthrop collection, Westbury, Long Island, the Pellegrini collection, Venice, and the August Franzen collection, New York.