Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
Madonna and Child
1512
Oil on lime, 49.3 × 37.4 × 2.8 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Inscription on the top right with the monogram, dat. 1512
The relatively small-format painting was certainly intended as a private devotional picture; however, a client is unknown. His name, which is used today, is derived from the piece of fruit that the Christ Child holds in his hand. In images of Mary, the pear may be interpreted as Christ himself, the fruit of the pear tree equated with Mary. Her lowered gaze also points to Christ’s predestined death on the cross, which was to redeem mankind from sins. Such a clue is probably also provided by the way Our Lady holds her child – as if she were offering it as a sacrifice. The elaborate graphic preparation of the Madonna figure on the primed panel is remarkable, as the photographs bring to light in the infrared light that penetrates the layers of paint: the signature has a delicacy, density and characteristic that can be compared to Dürer‘s hand drawings on paper. In contrast, the artist has only summarily laid out the contours of the Christ Boy. The painterly execution of the two figures also differs, because the thin, glazed painting style of Mary is contrasted with the emphatically sculptural modelling of the boy. A comparable head of the Virgin Mary can already be found in Dürer‘s painting of the Holy Family in Rotterdam, created in 1509. The heavily twisted boy, on the other hand, presupposes knowledge of an Italian archetype, which had been taken up many times in works by the Florentine Andrea del Verrocchio (1435/36 – 1488). The painting is most likely one of the numerous acquisitions of Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576 – 1612), who amassed the largest art collection of his time in his Prague residence. Around the middle of the 17th century, various painterly copies of the Dürer painting by Johann Christian Ruprecht (c. 1600 – 1654) were created in Vienna – where large parts of Rudolf‘s collections had also been moved with the relocation of the court – as well as a reproduction engraving by Frans van der Steen (c. 1627 – 1672), which shows the image of the Virgin Mary mirrored. These works, which correspond in size to Dürer‘s original, contributed decisively to the dissemination of the composition. One of Ruprecht’s paintings may have been donated to Passau Cathedral soon after 1662, where it was long venerated as a miraculous image and has successors in some copies of paintings that are still in church collections in southern Germany and Austria. Dürer‘s paintings experienced an independent reception in Italy, namely by Giovanni Battista Salvi, known as Sassoferrato (1609–1685). With his workshop, he painted an almost incalculable number of more or less faithful recreations, which are often only vaguely reminiscent of Dürer‘s archetype. Guido Messling [7.1.2018] (KHM)
See also:
• Rudolf II (1552-1612)