DOI Artikel:
Fabiański, Marcin: The Madonna and Child in Frombork and her Artistic Sources
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20613#0113
century32. Like Correggio, van Dyck represented
Mary with the Child who leans in the opposite
direction, thus creating a tension. The group is set in
an open semicircular arcade and is flanked by two
groups of saints standing below and gazing at the
holy vision. Correggio’s putto holding saint George’s
attribute, who seems to be coming out of the picture
toward the beholder, finds its counterpart in van
Dyck’s smali boy closing his nose with his hand, who
rushes forward violently out of the scene. This drama-
tic, realistic feature, seemingly incompatible with the
timeless character of a sacra conversazione scene,
appears to be a conventional symbol of epidemy
rather than an episodic, genre-like representation of
a boy avoiding the stench of decaying victims of the
plague in Palermo, as Bellori and Christopher Brown
believe, because the gesture adopted by the boy was
generally considered to prevent one from contracting
the disease33. Both Rubens and van Dyck reduced
the size of figures in relation to architecture in order
to emphasize the Madonna’s distance and van Dyck
replaced the architectural dado under Correggio’s
Mary with clouds replete with angels, one of whom
wreathes the Madonna. In this way the artist, like
Federico Barocci in his Madonna di Senigallia paint-
ed c. 35 years earlier, connected the subject of the
Rosary with that of Assumption34. The latter ob-
yiously reąuired a two-zoned structure.
9. Peter Paul Rubens, Madonna di San Giorgio, copy after the
painting by Correggio. Yienna, Albertina (from Mitsch)
10. Anton van Dyck, Madonna and Child with a Smali Angel;
a Małe Saint (?). Present whereabouts unknown (from Vey)
An earlier Madonna seated in clouds appears e.g.
in RaphaePs Madonna di Foligno35. Her generał pose
anticipates that in van Dyck, especially as far as the
legs resting diagonally on clouds, and a putto below
facing the spectator are concerned. RaphaeTs group
was popularized by prints by Marcantonio Raimondi
(B.52 and 53), Agostino Carracci (B.36) and Enea
Vico (B.6) and somehow it was known to Titian, who
adapted the group of Mary and Child in clouds in his
Gozzi altarpiece in Ancona36.
32 Cf. M. Jaffe, A Sheet of Drawings from Rubens’ Second
Roman Period and His Early Landscape Draughtsman (Oud Hol-
land, 72, 1957,1), p. 1; Idem, Rubens and Italy, Oxford 1977, p. 32;
E. Mitsch, Die Rubenszeichnungen der Albertina, Wien—Munchen
1977, p. 138, no. 58.
33 Cf. e.g. P. Beroaldus, De terre motu et pestilentiae,
Bononiae 1505, fols. DVv—DVIr; K. Sudhoff, Pestschriften aus
dem ersten 150 Jahren nach der Epidemie des „Schwarzen Todes”
1348 (Archiv fur Geschichte der Medizin, 16,1924), pp. 48—49, and
174ff.; E. Schróter, Raffaels „Madonna di Foligno”. Ein Pestbild?
(Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 1987, 1), p. 69.
34 Cf. A. Emiliani, Federico Barocci, Bologna 1985, p. 256.
35 J. Shearman, RaphaePs Clouds and Correggio’s [in:] Studi
su Raffaello. Atti del congresso internazionale di studi Urbi-
no-Firenze 6-14 aprile 1984, ed. M. Sambucco Hamond e M.
L. Strocchi, Urbino 1987, pp. 663—664.
36 Cf. H. E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, I: The Religious
Paintings, London 1969, p. 110.
109
Mary with the Child who leans in the opposite
direction, thus creating a tension. The group is set in
an open semicircular arcade and is flanked by two
groups of saints standing below and gazing at the
holy vision. Correggio’s putto holding saint George’s
attribute, who seems to be coming out of the picture
toward the beholder, finds its counterpart in van
Dyck’s smali boy closing his nose with his hand, who
rushes forward violently out of the scene. This drama-
tic, realistic feature, seemingly incompatible with the
timeless character of a sacra conversazione scene,
appears to be a conventional symbol of epidemy
rather than an episodic, genre-like representation of
a boy avoiding the stench of decaying victims of the
plague in Palermo, as Bellori and Christopher Brown
believe, because the gesture adopted by the boy was
generally considered to prevent one from contracting
the disease33. Both Rubens and van Dyck reduced
the size of figures in relation to architecture in order
to emphasize the Madonna’s distance and van Dyck
replaced the architectural dado under Correggio’s
Mary with clouds replete with angels, one of whom
wreathes the Madonna. In this way the artist, like
Federico Barocci in his Madonna di Senigallia paint-
ed c. 35 years earlier, connected the subject of the
Rosary with that of Assumption34. The latter ob-
yiously reąuired a two-zoned structure.
9. Peter Paul Rubens, Madonna di San Giorgio, copy after the
painting by Correggio. Yienna, Albertina (from Mitsch)
10. Anton van Dyck, Madonna and Child with a Smali Angel;
a Małe Saint (?). Present whereabouts unknown (from Vey)
An earlier Madonna seated in clouds appears e.g.
in RaphaePs Madonna di Foligno35. Her generał pose
anticipates that in van Dyck, especially as far as the
legs resting diagonally on clouds, and a putto below
facing the spectator are concerned. RaphaeTs group
was popularized by prints by Marcantonio Raimondi
(B.52 and 53), Agostino Carracci (B.36) and Enea
Vico (B.6) and somehow it was known to Titian, who
adapted the group of Mary and Child in clouds in his
Gozzi altarpiece in Ancona36.
32 Cf. M. Jaffe, A Sheet of Drawings from Rubens’ Second
Roman Period and His Early Landscape Draughtsman (Oud Hol-
land, 72, 1957,1), p. 1; Idem, Rubens and Italy, Oxford 1977, p. 32;
E. Mitsch, Die Rubenszeichnungen der Albertina, Wien—Munchen
1977, p. 138, no. 58.
33 Cf. e.g. P. Beroaldus, De terre motu et pestilentiae,
Bononiae 1505, fols. DVv—DVIr; K. Sudhoff, Pestschriften aus
dem ersten 150 Jahren nach der Epidemie des „Schwarzen Todes”
1348 (Archiv fur Geschichte der Medizin, 16,1924), pp. 48—49, and
174ff.; E. Schróter, Raffaels „Madonna di Foligno”. Ein Pestbild?
(Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 1987, 1), p. 69.
34 Cf. A. Emiliani, Federico Barocci, Bologna 1985, p. 256.
35 J. Shearman, RaphaePs Clouds and Correggio’s [in:] Studi
su Raffaello. Atti del congresso internazionale di studi Urbi-
no-Firenze 6-14 aprile 1984, ed. M. Sambucco Hamond e M.
L. Strocchi, Urbino 1987, pp. 663—664.
36 Cf. H. E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, I: The Religious
Paintings, London 1969, p. 110.
109