PAOLO DE STEFANO BADALONI, CALLED PAOLO SCHIAVO | Madonna and Child enthroned

Ameri Collection, Florence;
Private collection.

M. Boskovits, "Ancora su Paolo Schiavo: una scheda biografica e una proposta di catalogo," in Arte cristiana, vol. 83, 1995, pp. 335-6, reproduced fig. 5.

 

This Madonna and Child, first published by Miklòs Boskovits in 1995, demonstrates the influence of the Florentine Renaissance on the development of Paolo Schiavo’s style. After training with Lorenzo Monaco, he probably traveled to Rome with Masolino da Panicale (1383 - 1447) before returning to Tuscany. Dating to the 1440s, this panel represents Schiavo’s mature idiom, wherein the artist had absorbed the new emphasis on depicting convincing volume in figures derived from painters like Masolino and Masaccio (d. 1428). Paolo de Stefano Badaloni, called Schiavo because of his Dalmatian origins, was known in Florence for work on the frescoes in San Miniato al Monte (1436) and the Monastery of Sant'Apollonia (1448). Probably completed while Schiavo was working most closely with Masolino, the present panel already displays an increasingly natural approach to drapery, as well as an animated and charming depiction of the relationship between mother and child. The rosy cheeks of the figures lend a lighthearted feeling to the scene as the infant embraces his mother around her neck and leans into her. At the same time, the fictive red and gold canopy behind the figures and the arms of the throne on which they sit remind the viewer both of the tradition of iconic gold-ground panting in Florence from which Schiavo descended, and the divinity of the Virgin and Christ.