Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (12.1971)

Jan Białostocki

A MADONNA AND CHILD FROM FELIPE YIGARNI WORKSHOP

In our Bulletin for 1970 we have published a Catalogue of Sculptures acquired by the National
Museum in the last few years.1 Under Nr 10 there was discussed and reproduced (fig. 13) (our
fig. 1) an alabaster smali oval relief of Madonna and Child, which was described as made in
the early 16th century. Its connection with any particular Italian milieu seemed difficult to
substantiate. With some hesitation the relief was suggested to come from the Florentine school.

Since then it has been possible to establish the actual milieu in which the work originated
and the present note is intended to correct our previous wrong location of the piece.

The Virgin and Child is strongly connected with the group of analogous works of the Burgos
school by Diego de Siloe, Felipe Vigarni and their imitators, which was put together and published
in 1940 by Harold E. Wethey.2 His article is fundamental for the present note.

Ali the works which have been considered by Wethey go back to the beautiful Madonna in
Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 3), traditionally ascribed to Diego de Siloe and this attribution
was confirmed by Wethey's styJistic and historical analysis which led him to date the work
about 1525, "contemporary with the Constable high-altar" in Burgos Cathedral "or at least
in the period 1523-28 before Diego left Burgos and settled in Granada in 1528". Wethey finds
in the London work Italian stylistic motifs, echoes of Michelangelo, but also elements of Neth-
erlandish origin, as "the Child fondling His mother's chin" and the Madonna's coiffure. The
motif of the wind-blown veil or mantle comes from classical art and was transmitted to Diego
by the Italian Renaissance.

No w, Wethey was able to adduce three works, two of them similar in design, shape and materiał,
a third one made of wood in a rectangular field. Two alabaster reliefs are now in the Capilla
del Condestable of Burgos Cathedral (fig. 4) and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 2), respe-
ctive)y. They are obviously derived from Diego's masterpiece in London, and Wethey thinks
they originated in the workshop of the French collaborator of Diego de Siloe in Burgos, Felipe
Vigarni (Philippe Biguerny). The Burgos relief can be dated between 1522 and 1528, sińce it
belongs to the last stage of the decoration of the Condestable chapel, begun 1522, whose founder
Iiiigo Fernandez de Velasco died in 1528. Wethey stresses the similarity not only of motifs but
also of execution and techniąue of the two reliefs and concludes the Burgos and New York Madon-
nas are work of the same artist. The third work, in wood, in Milton Horn's collection, New York,
has heavy proportions, and although Wethey considers it a "pleasing and creditable piece of

1. Dariusz Kaczmarzyk, "NouvelIes acquisitions de hi sculpture europeenne: 1963 — 1969", Bulletin du Musee National da
Var$ovie, XI, 1970, (Nr 4 ), p. 117 ff. The materiał was mistakenlv identified as white marble.

2. Harold E. Wethey, "A Madonna and Child by Diego de Siloe", ^lr( Bulletin, XXII, 1940, p. 190-196. I am indebted for
the photograph of the New York relief to Miss Olga Raggio of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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