Madonna and Child

Former TitleThe Virgin and Child

Artist Giovanni Bellini (Italian (Venetian), 1431/1436-1516)

Dateca. 1485

MediumOil on canvas, transferred from wood panel

DimensionsUnframed: 28 9/16 x 21 13/16 inches (72.55 x 55.4 cm)
Framed: 46 x 39 x 6 inches (116.84 x 99.06 x 15.24 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberF61-66

Signedon the parapet: JOANNES BELLINVS

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionBehind a marbelized parapet, a seated, three-quarter length female figure (the Virgin Mary) holds a naked child (Christ). The Virgin Mary wears a white veil over her head and around her neck, and an aquamarine robe and mantel. The Christ child holds his left hand at his chin; his right arm is bent at the elbow. In the distance, behind the Christ child head, is a fortress with a central tower set upon a steep hill. In the right background is a vista of blue mountains. A narrow billowing cloud extends across the sky.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Inaugural Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, January 29-February 28, 1926, no, 144.

Loan Exhibition of Religious Art, Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York, March-April, 1927, no. 5.

Loan Exhibition of Primitives, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 16- March 2, 1929, no. 2.

Exhibition of Art Treasures for America from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., December 10 1961- February 4 1962, no. 4.

The Italian Heritage, Wildenstein & Co., New York, May 17- August 29, 1967, no. 9.

Giovanni Bellini, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, September 30, 2008–January 11, 2009, no. 29.

Shared Treasure: The Legacy of Samuel Kress, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA, October 14-January 15, 2011-2012.

Gallery Label

Giovanni Bellini was the greatest painter of the late 15th century in Venice, where oil paint first began to replace tempera as a favored medium for artists. With the richer more varied effects of oil combined with pigments, Bellini was able to convey a greater sense of naturalism and atmospheric unity and to take full advantage of light to express emotion. In this Madonna and Child, Bellini created a golden light that unites the looming figures of the Madonna and Child, thrust toward the spectator's space. The tower above the Child's head may refer to the 18th Psalm, "The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer… and my high tower," but the site has yet to be identified.

Provenance

Probably Hieremia Voltera (d. 1604), Venice, by 1602-1604;

Probably by bequest to Giacomo Collalto (1542-1621), Count of San Salvatore and Collalto, 1604 [1];

Probably by descent through the Counts of Collato, Castello di San Salvatore, Susegana, Treviso, 1604-1870 [2];

Carlos María Fitz-James Stuart y Palafox (1849-1901), Count de Montijo, Madrid, by 1870 [3];

Purchased at his sale, Tableaux anciens principalement de l’école espagnole, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 7-9, 1870, lot 12, by Otto Mündler (1811-1870) for Peter II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1827-1900), Augusteum, Oldenburg, Germany, 1870-1900;

Inherited by his son, Friedrich August II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1852-1931), 1900-1923;

Purchased from the Grand Duke of Oldenburg by Monsig for Frederick Müller et Cie, Amsterdam, April 1923;

Purchased from Müller by Frederick Schmidt-Degener for Duveen Brothers, Inc., New York, April 30, 1923-1927 [4];

Purchased from Duveen by Nicholas F. (1878-1930) and Genevieve (d. 1938) Brady, Manhasset, New York, 1927-1930;

Genevieve (d. 1938) Brady, Manhasset, New York, 1930-1938;

Inherited by Genevieve Brady’s second husband, William J. Babington Macaulay (1892-1964), 1938-1939;

Purchased from Macaulay by Duveen Brothers, New York, 1939-at least May 1950 [5];

Purchased from Duveen Brothers by Acquavella Galleries, New York, by February 8, 1952 [6];

Purchased from Acquavella by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, February 8, 1952-1961;

Its gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

NOTES:

[1] Archivio di Stato, Venice, Notarile, Testamenti, vol. 57, n. 261. See Georgios E. Markou, “An early owner of a Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini: the testament of Hieremia Voltera,” Arte Veneta 77 (2020): 228-231.

[2] Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i belliniani, vol. 1 (Venice, 1962), 13, and Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Italian Schools XV-XVI Centuries, (New York, 1968), 43. No painting of this description appears in any Collalto inventories published in C.A. Levi, Le collezioni veneziane d’arte e d’antichità dal secolo XIV ai nostri giorni, vol. 2 (Venice, 1900), 172. If Heinemann’s information is correct, the castle he mentions presumably refers to the Castello di San Salvatore at Susegana, near Conegliano, where several Venetian paintings are recorded earlier in this century.

[3] The seller’s name is given on the title page of the 1870 sale catalogue as “Villesante de Montija.”

[4] Julius Böhler is included in the provenance according to Heinemann 1962, and repeated in Shapley 1968 (See note 2). However, no such painting is listed in the Böhler stock books, photocopies in the Getty Research Institute. According to Duveen Brothers, in a cable from their Paris office to their New York office, April 3, 1923, Böhler never bought the painting. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Duveen Brothers Records, Box 270, folder 10.

[5] According to Duveen Brothers, in a letter to Macaulay, November 13, 1939, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Duveen Brothers Records, Box 529.

[6] According to Kimberly Vick, Acquavella Galleries, New York, in a letter to Eliot Rowlands, Assistant Curator, November 7, 1988, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Friedrich von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemӓlde in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg, 3^rd ed. (1845; Oldenburg, 1871), 48, (repro.).

Friedrich von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemӓlde, Gypse und Bronzen in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg, 6^th ed. (1845; Oldenburg: Schulze, 1890) 33, (repro.).

Wilhelm von Bode, Die Grossherzogliche Gemӓlde-Galerie zu Oldenburg (Vienna: Gesellschaft Für Vervielfӓltigende Kunst, 1888), 19, (repro.), as workshop, probably by Niccolò Rondinelli.

Bernard Berenson, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (New York: Putnam, 1894) 128, as Niccolò Rondinelli.

Kurzes Verzeichnis der Gemӓlde, Gips-Abgüsse und Bronze Nachbildungen der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung im Augusteum zu Oldenburg (1845; Oldenburg: Schulze, 1902), 11, (repro.).

Lionello Venturi, Le origini della pittura veneziana, 1300–1500 (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Arti Grafiche, 1907), 406, as a good version by Pasqualino Veneziano.

Detlev von Hadeln, “Kopien eines verschollenen Originals Giovanni Bellinis,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 21 (1910): 139–140, (repro.), as a good workshop copy of a lost original by Bellini.

G.F. Harlaub, ed., Die Grossherzogliche Gemӓlde-Galerie im Augusteum zu Oldenburg, vol. 2 (Oldenburg: C.G. Oncken, 1912), unpaginated, (repro.), as Niccolò Rondinelli.

Tancred Borenius, “The Venetian School in the Grand-Ducal Collection, Oldenburg,” The Burlington Magazine 23 (1913): 25–26, (repro.).

Provinzial–Museum in Bonn: Katalog der Gemӓldegalerie vorwiegend Sammlung Wesendonck (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1914), 10, as workshop copy of a lost original by Bellini.

Bernard Berenson, Venetian Painting in America (New York: F.F. Sherman, 1916), 88–93, (repro.).

Bernard Berenson, “Un possibile Antonello da Messina ed uno impossible–II,” Dedalo 4 (July, 1923): 112, 170 (repro.), as the earliest autograph versionCatalogue of inaugural exhibition, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1926), 36 (repro.).

Bernard Berenson, “A Possible and an Impossible ‘Antonello da Messina,” in Three Essays in Method (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927), 120.

Loan Exhibition of Religious Art for the benefit of the Basilique of the Sacre Coeur of Paris, exh. cat. (New York, 1927), unpaginated, (repro.).

“Italian Primitives in Knoedler Loan Exhibition,” Art News 27 (February 9, 1929): 1.

Loan Exhibition of Primitives, exh. cat. (New York, 1929), unpaginated.

Georg Gronau, Giovanni Bellini: des Meisters Gemälde in 207 Abbildungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1930), 212, 128, (repro.), as a later autograph version of the ex-Salomon Madonna.

Rodolfo Pallucchini, “Una Madonna di Giambattista Cima da Conegliano,” Rivista d’arte 13 (1931): 236, as a copy of a lost painting by Antonello da Messina.

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 71.

Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, vol. 2 (New York: E. Wyhe, 1933), unpaginated, (repro.).

Luitpold Dussler, Giovanni Bellini (Frankfurt: Prestel, 1935), 149.

Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 17 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1935), 293-94, 385, 431, 468, as a replica of the ex-Salomon Madonna, related to similar works by Cima da Conegliano and Pasqualino Veneziano.

Bernhard Berenson, I pittori italiani del rinascimento (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1936), 21 (repro.).

Carlo Gamba, Giovanni Bellini (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1937), 114-15 (repro.).

National Gallery of Art: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1941), 21 (repro.), as version of the ex-Wesendonck Madonna.

C.L. Ragghianti, “Una Madonna di Giovanni Bellini,” in Miscellanea minore di critica d’arte (Bari: Laterza, 1946), 124.

Erika Tietze-Conrat, “An Unpublished Madonna by Giovanni Bellini and the Problem of Replicas in His Shop,” Gazette des Beaux–Arts 33 (1948): 379–81, as a workshop version of the Madonna and Child in the Clowes Collection, which she publishes as autograph, c. 1487.

Luitpold Dussler, Giovanni Bellini (Vienna: Verlag von Anton Schrool, 1949), unpaginated, (repro.).

The Kansas City Star (October 26, 1952): E1, (repro.).

Catalogue of the Samuel H. Kress collection of Italian paintings and sculptures (Kansas City, MO: The William Rockwell Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1952), 46, (repro.).

John D. Morse, Old Masters in America (New York: Rand McNally, 1955), 14.

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School, vol. 1 (London and New York: Phaidon Press, 1957), 31.

Rodolfo Pallucchini, Giovanni Bellini (Milan: A. Martello, 1959), 151.

Lionello Puppi, “Per Pasqualino Veneto,” Critica d’arte 8 (March–April 1961): 37, 46n9, 46n11, (repro.), as the original, 1485/90, of a painting by Pasqualino Veneziano formerly in the Vieweg collection.

Guy Emerson, “The Kress Collection: A Gift to the Nation,” National Geographic Magazine (December, 1961): 836, 848, (repro.).

Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, 2^nd ed. (London: The National Gallery, 1961), 65.

Exhibition of Art Treasures for America from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, exh. cat. (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1961), unpaginated, (repro.).

Felton Gibbons, “Giovanni Bellini and Rocco Marconi,” Art Bulletin 44 (1962): 129.

Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e I Belliniani, vol. 1 (Venice: Pozza, 1962), 13 (repro.), as Bellini with assistance.

Stefano Bottari, Tutta la pittura di Giovanni Bellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1963), 1:40, 44–45; 2: unpaginated, (repro.).

The Italian Heritage for the Benefit of the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, exh. cat. (New York: Wildenstein, 1967), unpaginated, (repro.).

Fern Rusk Shapley, The Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV–XVI Century (London: Phaidon Press, 1968), 43–44, 60, (repro.).

Renato Ghiotto and Terisio Pignatti, L’opera complete di Giovanni Bellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1969), no. 119, p. 99, 105, (repro.).

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 22, 329, 589.

Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 14.

The National Gallery: Illustrated General Catalogue (London: National Gallery, 1973), 31, erroneously lists painting as in the “Brady collection, New York.”

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, 5^th ed., vol. 1 (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 86, (repro.).

Yves Bonnefoy and Terisio Pignatti, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Giovanni Bellini (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), no. 119, p. 99, (repro.).

Carolyn C. Wilson, “Bellini’s Pesaro Altarpiece: A Study in Context and Meaning” (PhD diss., New York University, 1977), 213, (repro.).

H.W. Van Os, The Early Venetian Paintings in Holland (Maarsen: G. Schwartz, 1978), 20, 125.

John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America (New York: Abbeville Press, 1979), 16.

F. R. Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, vol. 1 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1979), 55–56.

Peter Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 141.

Rona Goffen, Giovanni Bellini (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 289, as Bellini with assistance.

Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i Belliniani, vol. 3 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1991), 6.

Anchise Tempestini, Giovanni Bellini: Catalogo complete dei dipinti (Florence: Cantini, 1992), 136, as workshop of Bellini.

Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1933–1993 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 87.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills, 1993), 147, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, Italian Paintings, 1300-1800: The Collections of the Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 20, 115–124, (repro.).

Mauro Lucco and Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, Giovanni Bellini, exh. cat. (Milan: Silvana, 2008), 234, (repro.).

Sebastian Dohe, Malve Anna Falk and Rainer Stamm, eds., Die Gemäldegalerie Oldenberg: Eine europäische Altmeistersammlung (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag GmbH & Co., KG, 2017), 157.

Georgios E. Markou, “An early owner of a Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini: the testament of Hieremia Voltera,” Arte Veneta 77 (June/July 2021): 228-231, (repro.).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.