Sunday, December 27, 2015

Informal Madonnas

Simon Vouet
Madonna & Child with St. Elizabeth
ca. 1624-26
Prado

A softer and more pliable Madonna dominated European painting after 1600. The relaxed style had been foreshadowed for a some while,.representations of the Virgin growing warmer as religious faith cooled. One line of argument holds that the increased 'persuasive' function aspired to by Baroque religious art  and the consequent humanizing of heaven  was a belated campaign to promote an already-lost cause.

Bartolomé Murillo
Madonna Gives Her Milk to St. Bernard
ca. 1655
Prado

Carlo Maratta
Madonna & Child
ca. 1656
Prado

Giambattista Tiepolo
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1758-59
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anton Raphael Mengs
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1769
Prado

François Boucher
Madonna & Child with St. John the Baptist
1765
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sebastiano Ricci
Holy Family with Angels
ca. 1700
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francisco Goya
Holy Family with St. John the Baptist
1775-80
Prado

Michel-Ange Houasse
Holy Family with St. John the Baptist
1723
Prado

The final three paintings, all from the Prado, are equally warm but date back to earlier times.

Ippolito Scarsella
Madonna & Child
ca. 1585
Prado

Correggio
Madonna & Child with St. John the Baptist
ca. 1516
Prado

Francesco Salviati
Holy Family with Angel Bird Catcher
ca. 1543
Prado

Francesco Salviati chose to work with an unusually wide spectrum of colors in his Holy Family  with angel offering a rainbow-colored cockatoo to Baby Jesus (and St Joseph asleep, in burnt orange).