Carpaccio, Vittore (c.1460-c.1526)
Madonna che legge (The Virgin Reading)
c.1505
Oil on panel transferred to canvas, 78 x 51 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Carpaccio reimagined the Madonna and Child theme when he made this painting. Instead of wearing a traditional blue cloak, the Virgin Mary, or Madonna, is clothed in fashionable Venetian dress. Absorbed in her reading, she sits in an unconventional profile pose instead of looking out at viewers or attending to her infant son. Today we only see a partial image of baby Jesus, resting on a pillow on the left. Scholars think the painting was cut down along the left side sometime in the 1700s. The picture’s original size and shape are unknown. The painting might have depicted only the Virgin and Child, or it might have been a larger work with other figures. Shown from the hips up against a landscape, a woman with pale skin, wearing a burgundy-red dress with marigold-orange sleeves and a sheer veil, sits facing our left in profile as she reads a small book in this vertical painting. She has a straight nose and peach-colored lips. Her blond hair is covered by a bone-white headdress tied over her forehead. The veil drapes over the headdress, and her head is encircled with a faint gold ring, creating a halo. Her dress has full sleeves and is cinched into pleats at the high waist. The neckline is edged with a band of nickel gray decorated with a pattern of circles and leafy forms. The book has a red cover with a red ribbon, and she holds one index finger between the pages. A low chalk-white stone wall beyond the woman suggests she sits on a porch or balcony. A swath of powder-blue fabric drapes over the ledge on which she sits near one knee. To our left, a sliver of a shoulder, elbow, and toes of one foot suggest a person with pale skin draped in midnight blue, leaning back against a maroon-red pillow with tassels at the corners, in front of the woman and to our left. Behind that second person, in the landscape beyond the balcony, barren branches of a tree twist against the sky while a second tree, to our right, has a leafy, green canopy. A mustard-yellow meadow lined with bushes leads to the water’s edge, where ice-blue water leads back to rolling hills along the horizon. A few white buildings and a tower are clustered on the opposite shore. White and gray clouds float against the pale blue sky. (NGA)