Barnaba da Modena

Private collection, Milan;

Anonymous sale, Florence, Pandolfini, 17 November 2015, lot 210;

With Galerie G. Sarti, Paris.

Conceived to inspire personal devotion, this panel is an important early work by Barnaba da Modena, one of the most significant Northern Italian artists in the second half of the fourteenth century. The half-length figures of the Madonna and the infant Christ—intimately cropped and set against a rich gold backdrop— reciprocate the beholder’s gaze encouraging an emotive response. Rhythmic gold lines radiate across their robes indicating the folds in the fabric and their garments were seemingly enriched with intricate Byzantine chrysography, best preserved on Christ's orange cloak and light blue tunic. Meticulously inscribed text in the Virgin’s nimbus reads “ave gratia plena dom[inus tecum].”

The present panel most closely compares with Barnaba’s Madonna and Child of the Sanctuary of the Rocchetta, Lerma. In these early works, the delicate features, soft shadows, and rounded face of Christ are notably different from the painter’s mature style.

The panel has been reduced on all four sides. In its original form, the top would have been crowned by a five-arched centina, its contours accentuated by three-lobed punchwork arches. Traces of the first pair of punched arches remain visible in the upper corners of the panel, and the shape of the remaining three can be inferred through comparison with the Madonna Lactans in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa.

This panel's rediscovery within the last decade has enriched scholarly understanding of Barnaba’s oeuvre and brought to light perhaps one of the earliest examples of an important motif in religious iconography: the Christ Child grasping his opposite foot with one hand. In this subtle symbolic gesture, the infant Christ positions himself as though on the axis of a cross, unconsciously foreshadowing his sacrifice for the salvation of humanity. Barnaba da Modena later returned to this motif, seen also in the Städel Madonna dated 1367; the polyptych of Sant’Andrea, Ripoli; the former Crespi-Morbio panel; and the panel in the Museo Civico di Palazzo Madama, Turin. In these iterations, Christ turns to the side, evoking Lorenzettian examples. Here and in the Lerma painting, the infant is shown in profile, lifting his foot toward the viewer in an original and evocative pose.