The Madonna and Child

We are grateful to Professor George Knox for confirming the attribution on the basis of a transparency. He regards the picture as an 'admirable example of [Amigoni's] work' painted while the artist was working in Bavaria in the 1720s. It was in Southern Germany, where he is recorded from circa 1715 until 1729, that Amigoni established his reputation. His output from this period reveals the prevailing influence of the leading contemporary Venetian painters, among them Antonio Bellucci, under whom he is thought to have trained, as well as Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. As pointed out by Knox, the most obvious comparison can be made with the Madonna and Child painted for the Kloster Benediktbeuern, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, which is dated by Holler (W. Holler, Jacopo Amigonis Fruhwerk in Suddeutschland, Zurich and New York, 1986) to 1720-3 (see A. Scarpa Sonino, Jacopo Amigoni, Soncino, 1994, p. 25, fig.8). In both works, which are almost identical in size, the Virgin is shown half-length, facing to her right and supporting the sleeping Christ Child on her lap. Another comparable work, also in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, is the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, similarly dated by Holler (loc. cit.) to 1720-5, in which the face of the Virgin is reversed (Scarpa Sonino, op. cit., p. 130, fig. XXIV).