Virgin and Child

The youthful Virgin Mary, dressed in a dark blue gown, with a red mantle over her shoulders and a white veil on her head, is seated in a flower garden, gently holding her child on her lap. The Christ Child turns slightly to the right and raises his hand in blessing. The motif of the Madonna seated in a garden had long been familiar in Netherlandish art, and here it is enriched with background elements popular in the sixteenth century. To Mary’s right appear a ruined wall, a hilly landscape, and turreted buildings, while on the other side a Renaissance urban setting can be seen, accessible from the garden by a staircase, with an arcaded passage, stepped gables, and urban palaces marked by corner towers. These architectural forms, familiar to the viewer, together with the fashionably dressed passers-by and the white dog sniffing at the foot of the stairs, are all motifs evoking the everyday life of the period. By including them, the painter helped viewers of the time to feel spiritually closer to Mary and her Child, thus fostering devotional contemplation, just as had long been customary in earlier Netherlandish art. Compared to fifteenth-century representations of the same subject, however, the landscape in the background has become more prominent. In the Esztergom painting, Mary seated in the foreground does not fully integrate into her surroundings; mother and son seem almost to sit before a backdrop. This is most likely due to the fact that the composition was based on a drawing, already identified in earlier scholarship, made around 1440–50 after a lost painting by Rogier van der Weyden. Its unmistakable use here demonstrates the long-lasting influence of the great Brussels master. The earliest known adaptation of the silverpoint drawing preserved in Rotterdam dates from around 1480, yet it continued to find significant resonance in sixteenth-century Bruges as well, where it was also employed in the workshops of Ambrosius Benson and Adriaen Isenbrant. The panel’s archaic style of painting, its composition, and its close adherence to the Van der Weyden prototype make dating the work difficult. It is nevertheless certain that among the flowers depicted in the foreground — flowers that also carry symbolic meanings associated with Mary and Jesus — there appear tulips and crown imperials, plants introduced to Europe from Turkey only in the mid- to later sixteenth century.

Provenance

Hatvany Ferenc ajándéka

Exhibitions

• 2015 Sankt Pölten, Diözesanmuseum, Meisterwerke aus dem Keresztény Múzeum

Bibliography

• Wolfgang Huber (szerk.): Meisterwerke aus dem Keresztény Múzeum; kiáll.kat; Sankt Pölten 2015. Sarkadi Nagy Emese
• Cséfalvay Pál, szerk.: Keresztény Múzeum, Esztergom. Budapest, 1993., 206 (János Végh). A Rogier van der Weyden nyomán készült rajzhoz lásd: Fitz Koreny- Erwin Pokorny - George Zeman (Hg): Early Netherlandish drawings from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch” Antwerp 2002, 82-84. no. 16.
• Mucsi András: Az esztergomi Keresztény Múzeum Régi Képtárának katalógusa. Budapest, 1975, 29;
• Urbach Zsuzsa: Korai németalföldi táblaképek Budapest 1971, 22;
• Boskovits Miklós-Mojzer Miklós-Mucsi András: Az esztergomi Keresztény Múzeum képtára. Budapest, 1964. , 190;
• Magyarország műemléki topográfiája I. Esztergom 1. Esztergom műemlékei.összeállította: Genthon István, Budapest, 1948., 102;