Master DI LONIGO ( Italy, 1420-1445). "Madonna... Lot 21

Master DI LONIGO ( Italy, 1420-1445). "Madonna of Humility, circa 1440. Tempera on poplar panel. Enclosed certificate and pigmentation analysis with X-ray. Measurements: 76.5 x 49.5 cm; 80 x 64 cm (frame). In the words of the study carried out by Professor Gaudenz Freuler on this work, "The painting of the Virgin sitting humbly on the ground, adoring her son lying on her lap, is a characteristic work of the Master of Lonigo, who worked in the Veneto. The undulating gold stripes, as if blown by the wind, and the rich golden dress of the Madonna are characteristic of the painter's work, which is characterised by the international Gothic style and bears the name of his (now unfortunately lost) image of the Madonna in the Cathedral of Lonigo. Significantly, it is the pictorial invention of this painting of the Madonna that our painter has taken up and realised with slight variations. As his work, which is distributed in various museums and private collections, shows, the late Gothic nostalgic created an impressive series of similar devotional paintings. These are characterised by a Virgin seated in a flower meadow (Hortus Conclusus), which is separated by a hedge at the back, and at the same time adoring her child. This form of the image of the Virgin - which unmistakably refers back to Gentile da Fabriano, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria and the form formed in Pisa, Museo Civico I - was enjoyed in Venice itself and in the Veneto and has been taken up countless times by followers of the great painter from Fabriano, for example by Zanino di Pietro or Jacobello del Fiore. It is precisely these two painters, active in the Veneto, whose work directly inspired the Master of Lonigo, who is a comparison of Jacobello del Fiore. The chronological classification of this painter's oeuvre is not simple in itself, as his style does not vary greatly throughout his oeuvre. However, the detail of the halo of the Christ Child, conceived as a disc and therefore three-dimensional, indicates that the present painting was executed relatively late in his career, probably in the fifth decade of the 15th century. It was at this time that the Venetian paintings of Jacopo Bellini and Michele di Giambono began to articulate the halos spatially as discs". The predominance of gold leaf occupying much of the background as a symbol of transcendence was characteristic of the early Gothic. During this period art was primarily didactic in purpose, and its images were conceived as a visual narrative, which was always to be clearly legible. At this time, prior to the quest for naturalism that would emerge during the Gothic period, the language is purely conceptual, and functions on the basis of generally accepted symbols and conventions. In this sense, the carving is synthetic, representative rather than a reflection of the natural, as is the treatment of the face.