(Conegliano c. 1459/60–1517)
Madonna and Child,
tempera grassa on panel, 50 x 39 cm, in a tabernacle frame

Provenance:
possibly Prince Anatoly Demidov Florence or Russia, before 1870;
Sterbini collection, Rome;
with Julius Böhler, Munich;
with Steinmeyer & Bourgeois, New York, 1910;
Samuel Untermeyer collection, New York;
Untermeyer sale, New York, 5 March 1942, lot 71 (as Anton Maria da Carpi);
Karl Loevenich, New York, after 1949;
European Private Collection

Literature:
P. Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano, Cambridge 1983, pp. 169-170, no. 175, fig. 113a (as attributed to Girolamo da Udine)

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

The present painting has been considerably altered by restoration. This can be seen in the addition of higher mountains, raising the line of the horizon, as well as in the reworking of the green curtain and part of the Madonna’s blue mantle. This was most probably intended to make it identical to another panel, currently in the Statens Museum of Art in Copenhagen (inv. KMS 3661). As the latter panel is slightly larger (58 x 44.5 cm), and was painted from the outset with higher mountains in the background, the underlying logic was clearly that it was the prototype from which the present version should derive. However the copyist should not generally be free to choose a different background; apart from the differences in conservation, the two versions are in some way independent, and equally original. The Danish picture was originally attributed to Cima da Conegliano until George Martin Richter (Italian pictures in Scandinavian collections, in “Apollo” XIX, 1934, pp.128-129) suggested the name of Girolamo di Bernardino da Udine, which is how it appears in the museum today. Noting the similarity between the present painting and the picture in Copenhagen but unable to effect a direct examination, Peter Humfrey (see Cima da Conegliano, Cambridge 1983, pp. 169-170) has suggested that the same name is also plausible for the present picture. However in the Untermeyer sale of 1942 it was attributed to Anton Maria da Carpi.

As Humfrey has pointed out, both are variants of the panel signed by Cima in the Johnson Collection of Philadelphia (inv. no. 176), painted around 1485 and almost identical in terms of composition: The only differences are the head of the Child, shown in three-quarter profile (whereas in the present painting it is shown almost frontally), the hand of the Virgin holding the Child, the play of folds on her dress and mantle, and the landscape. It has been suggested that the head of the Child in the present work derives from the head of the Child in Cima’s Madonna and Child at the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco (no. 1981.6), of circa 1504-5. However, the rounded, more classical maturity of the San Francisco version categorically excludes the theory that the present panel, with its drier and sharper handling of the form, could have been executed long after circa 1485.

We can therefore state that, while the present painting has been seriously lessened in terms of legibility, the parts that are still legible do not vary significantly from Cima’s style. In other words, it can be concluded that it was the master himself who executed this work, introducing the altered head of the Child from the Copenhagen picture, as well as the lower-lying landscape. Regrettably, the present painting has been compromised by successive reworking, presumably a result of the patchy and at times misguided restoration techniques of the 19th century.

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for his help in cataloguing the present painting.