(Montagnana 1440/50–1499 Padua)
Madonna and Child,
tempera and oil on panel, 55.5 x 42.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London;
Private collection, Milan

Literature:
M. Lucco, Sul catalogo di Jacopo da Montagnana, in: Jacopo da Montagnana e la pittura padovana del secondo Quattrocento, ed. by A. de Nicoló Salmazo/G. Ericani, Padova 2002, p. 141, fig. 36 (as Jacopo da Montagnana)

The present painting is registered as a work by Jacopo da Montagnana in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 24501
Traditionally attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani, the present painting was reattributed to Jacopo da Montagnana by Mauro Lucco and published his monographic essay in 2002 (see literature).   

Jacopo da Montagnana began his career in Padua, where between 1458 and 1461, he was trained by Bolognese artist Francesco Brazalieri (1410–after 1484). According to Vasari and Ridolfi, he was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini; although no formal relationship is documented, it is clear that Jacopo was strongly influenced by the Venetian painter. The dominant influence on his art, however, was Andrea Mantegna, whose altarpiece for San Zeno, Verona, was painted in Padua in 1457–9. His principal surviving and securely attributed works are nearly all frescoes in Padua, Belluno and Monteorte. A wider range of his activities is suggested by the papal vestments (Padua, Santo) that he designed for Sixtus IV in 1472.

Of works executed in the Santo, Padua, nothing remains of the frescoes of 1469–77 for the Gattamelata Chapel and only one scene, the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, survives from the frescoes of 1487–8 for the Chiostro del Noviziato. Only fragments remain of a remarkable fresco cycle (1489–90) of scenes from Roman History in the Palazzo dei Nobili, Belluno, which was destroyed in 1838 along with his frescoes on its façade. The interior frescoes, with their celebration of Classical civic virtues, were recorded in engravings by Melchiorre Toller (1800–46) and in drawings by Ippolito Caffi (1809–66).

Of Jacopo’s surviving work, the frescoes of scenes from the Lives of SS Stephen and Paul and the Life of Christ in Santo Stefano, Belluno, date from 1485–6. In Padua he was commissioned by Bishop Pietro Barozzi to decorate his private chapel at the Palazzo Vescovile, where in 1494 he produced figures of the Evangelists and Church Fathers on the ceiling and Christ among the Apostles on the walls, and in 1495 an altarpiece of which the central Annunciation. The sanctuary of Monte Ortone, Monteortone, contains his most important extant work, a cycle of 1494–7 incorporating scenes from Genesis and the Life of the Virgin as well as representations of Prophets and Church Fathers. The prominent architectural elements rendered in perspective make clear his continuing debt to Mantegna. The two panels of the Annunciation in the Accademia, Venice, which were originally organ shutters for Monte Ortone, probably date from the same years as the fresco cycle.