AFTER ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA, 15TH OR EARLY 16TH CENTURY

細節

A GLAZED TERRACOTTA RELIEF OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED
AFTER ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA, 15TH OR EARLY 16TH CENTURY
The relief with rounded top; the Virgin with Christ on her right knee and holding her right breast; with cherubim in the background; in a later faux marbre frame; chips and minor damages
19¾ in. (50.2 cm.) high; 26¾ in. (68 cm.) high, overall

來源

Bought by Agnew at the H. J. Garcia sale, Christie's, London, 14 May 1878, lot 33, subsequently sold to Lady Wantage and thence by descent.

出版

F. Russell ed., The Loyd Collection of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, revised edition 1991, p. 53, no. 149.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
A. Marquand, Andrea della Robbia and his Atelier, New York, 1972, I, p. 77-8, no. 54, pl. 57.

注意事項

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

拍場告示

Following a thermoluminescence test on this lot, this relief is now dated to the late 19th century. The estimate has been revised to 2-3000GBP.

拍品專文

The distinctive blue and white colours of the present relief of the Virgin and Child have always been unmistakably connected to the works of the Della Robbia family. Made on a small scale, the present relief was almost certainly intended to furnish a private chapel, and depicts the very intimate scene of the young mother suckling her infant child as a gathering of cherubim overlook from behind. The playfulness of this scene is far removed from the earlier style of Luca della Robbia, whose reliefs tended to display the great pathos of the young Christ's fate, as can be seen in the Virgin's often tortured gaze and the child's fearing pose. This relief is, in fact, closer to Andrea della Robbia, the nephew of Luca, who rendered these scenes of mother and child with a greater sense of humanity, intimacy, and, ultimately, hope. The relief relates most closely to Andrea's Madonna with Nude Child Seated on a Cushion in the Museo Nazionale, Palermo (Marquand, loc. cit.), where the Virgin is depicted as a young woman, veiled, adoringly looking at her child seated on a cushion and with very similar cherubim looking on in the background. The fact that the two reliefs vary in the overall scale and, in the case of the former, by only depicting the Virgin from the waist up, suggest that the present relief was probably conceived on a smaller scale in order to be reproduced in larger numbers by the workshop.