Lot 15: ANDREA MELDOLLA, CALLED SCHIAVONE

ANDREA MELDOLLA, CALLED SCHIAVONE ZARA (?) (ZADAR) CIRCA 1510 (?) - 1563 VENICE MADONNA AND CHILD oil on canvas 29 1/4 by 20 1/8 in.; 74.3 by 51.1 cm.

Purchased in Europe by members of the Garret Club in honor of their friend and fellow member, Helen Holland Keating, circa 1925, and in situ at their headquarters in Buffalo, NY until the present day.

The present painting appears to have been cut down and is likely the central portion of a sacra conversazione. This explains why the Virgin and Christ Child each look in opposite directions, as if interacting with people just outside the limits of the canvas. It is also interesting to note this work's similarities with another Madonna and Child by Schiavone, which is recorded in Richardson's monograph on the artist.υ1 That work, larger in size than the present picture, is one of two depictions of the Virgin and Child with no accompanying figures that is recorded in the inventory that the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, Schiavone's friend and executor, made after the artist's death. Indeed, there is good reason to connect these paintings since in both, the Madonna is dressed in rose-colored robes with a blue-gray mantle and diaphanous scarf, with a wooded mountain landscape behind. The extremely loose handling of the paint, rich palette and the figure of the infant Jesus all recall Schiavone's more famous contemporary, Titian, whose style had a great impact on the artist, especially after 1550.

1. See F. Richardson, Andrea Schiavone, Oxford 1980, p. 170, no. 282.