(Ravenna 1552–1638)
Madonna and Child,
oil on canvas, 44.5 x 38.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Alberto Crispo for suggesting the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

This composition relates to The Madonna of the Rose, a work by Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called il Parmigianino, conserved in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (inv. no. 161).

Whereas in the painting by Parmigianino the figures may either refer to the Madonna and Child or Venus and Cupid and are thereby left open to interpretation, whether religious or profane, the religious context of the present painting is evident. In the present composition the subject portrayed is recognisable as the Madonna and Child thanks to the Madonna’s veil and the figures’s halos. In both Parmigianino’s and Longhi’s compositions, the Child is holding a rose.

Barbara Longhi was the daughter and pupil of Luca Longhi, who greatly influenced her early works. Vasari praised the talent of the young artist while visiting the house of her father in Ravenna, ‘[she] draws very well, and she has begun to colour some things with good grace and manner’ (see P. Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity, Manchester/New York 1997, p. 12). After the use of a more limited palette in her early artistic production, she later used vivid colours and her figures developed a sculptural and monumental appearance.

Barbara Longhi was celebrated for her images of the Madonna and Child, such as the present painting, to which she would often add draperies and small windows showing landscapes or skies in the background, elements which derived from Correggio’s and Parmigianino’s works. From Leonardo and Raphael compositions she would instead take the sfumato technique and the use of pyramidal figure compositions.