Attributed to Jacopo Palma il Vecchio

(Serina circa 1479-1528 Venice)

The Madonna and Child before a landscape

Footnotes

Literature
P. Rylands, Palma Vecchio, New York, 1992, p. 169, under cat. no. 26

We are grateful to Prof. Peter Humfrey for his assistance in cataloguing the present work. A further version of this Madonna and Child can be found in the Hermitage (inv. no. 5552) which is on canvas.

The present work is typical of Palma whose output for the most part comprised Sacre Conversazioni, compositions of the Madonna and Child or studies of sensuous half-length female beauties. He undertook commissions for a number of churches in Venice and the Veneto but a large proportion of his paintings were produced for private clients and, like this piece, were of smaller size being domestic commissions. Little is known of his early life other than that he came from a town near Bergamo and his influences were likely to have been Bellini and Cima – certainly the device of setting his figures in a verdant landscape is something he probably took from Cima. Vasari reports that Lorenzo Lotto was a close friend and an exchange of artistic ideas between the two is apparent. By 1510 Palma was in Venice and was part of an artistic current dominated by Titian that was riding the crest of a wave. Philip Rylands dates the present work to around 1515-16, shortly after this move and the rich, vibrant tones of chartreuse green, royal blue, amber and claret red that Palma employs are typical of the palette that defines Venetian painting of the period.