Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist
Date:
1527/30 or later
Artist:
Agnolo Bronzino or Follower Italian, 1503–1572
About this artwork
This charming image of the Virgin and Child provides a revealing glimpse of workshop practice in the circle of Agnolo Bronzino and his master, Jacopo da Pontormo, two of the most sophisticated Mannerist artists working in Florence. Two other versions of the composition are known; like this one, they are unfinished, though Bronzino brought them to a further state of completion. The most finished example, in a private collection, shows the polished style of Bronzino at the time when he was working under the guidance of Pontormo (and was probably still in his shop). The other two follow a cartoon, or pattern drawing, based on this work and may be from a later date. It is unclear why these replicas were begun and then abandoned.
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John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), p. 254 (ill.).
Kurt W. Forster, “A Madonna by Maso da San Friano,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 7 (1972), pp. 34–51, figs. 1, 4, 6, 13.
Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian paintings in American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 168, 336, 571.
Cecil Gould, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools (London, 1975), p. 87.
Valentino Pace, “Maso da San Friano,” Bollettino d’Arte 61 (1976), p. 91.
Anna Matteloi, “Una S. Famiglia di Maso da San Friano,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 29 (1985), p. 394.
Christopher Lloyd. Italian Paintings Before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1993), pp. 2025, ill.
Phillippe Costamagna, Pontormo (Milan, 1994), pp. 11, 301, no. A66.1.
Frank Zuccari, “Conservations of Italian Paintings in Chicago” in Early Italian Paintings: Approaches to Conservation. Proceedings of a Symposium at the Yale University Art Gallery, April 2002, ed. by Patricia Sherwin Garland (New Haven and London, 2003), pp. 254–5, figs. 18.4 and 5.
The Art Institute of Chicago, The Art of the Edge: European Frames, 1300–1900, 1986, cat. 6.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey, October 16, 1999 – January 9, 2000, included in the gallery that held Viola’s The Greeting for the Chicago venue.
Sestieri, Rome; sold to Colnaghi, London, 1962 [according to letter of January 29, 1991 from Jeremy Howard of Colnaghi in curatorial file]; purchased from Colnaghi by the Art Institute through the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Endowment, 1963.
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