A woman holds a baby in front of a background of buildings.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

A light-skinned woman faces the viewer. She wears a blue hooded cloak. Her features are lifelike and sensuous, with a pink flush in her cheeks, nose, and slightly parted lips. She holds a plump light-skinned baby on a stone platform. The baby gazes at the woman with large blue eyes. He wears a gauzy white garment and holds a pomegranate, which has been ripped open to reveal the dark red seeds inside. Both figures have translucent golden halos positioned horizontally above their heads. Behind the figures are gray stone columns and a view of distant narrow beige buildings with turrets.

Gallery Text

Botticelli oversaw an active workshop that produced multiple versions of the same composition. The central figures in this painting are a reworking of the Virgin and Child from the San Barnaba altarpiece, one of the most important commissions of Botticelli’s mature period in Florence. They are framed in a pavilion whose perspective is carefully rendered, while in the background, a townscape rises beneath a blue sky. The crisp linearity, idealized facial features, foreshortened halos, and geometric organization of space are characteristically Florentine. The architecture of the buildings, however, is Netherlandish — evidence of the vibrant cultural exchange between Florence and the North during the fifteenth century. Technical studies show that the Christ child originally held a recorder, an unusual attribute that was apparently rejected and painted over with the pomegranate, a symbol of the Passion because of its blood-red seeds.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.105
People
Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro Filipepi), Italian (Florence, Italy 1444/45 - 1510 Florence, Italy)
Title
The Virgin and Child
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1490
Places
Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Florence
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/230460

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2500, European Art, 13th–16th century, Art and Image in Europe
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Tempera on panel
Dimensions
88.9 x 55.9 cm (35 x 22 in.)
framed: 109 x 76 cm (42 15/16 x 29 15/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Mrs. Molyan, England. [Durlacher, London, 1920]. [Demotte, New York], sold; to Grenville Lindall Winthrop, 1923, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.105
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Osvald Sirén, "Early Italian Pictures at Cambridge", Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs (December, 1920), Vol. 37, No. 213, pp. 299
  • Raimond Van Marle, Development of Italian Schools of Painting, Martinus Nijhoff (The Hague, Netherlands, 1923 - 1938), pp. 220
  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1972), p. 33
  • Andrea Kirsh, "Worlds Below: An Investigation of Infrared Reflectography" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, April 1973), Unpublished, pp. 1-25 passim
  • "Under Infared Light: The Artist's First Thought was a Recorder, Not a Pomegranate", Harvard Magazine (July - August 1974), p. 25, repr.
  • Ronald Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1977), Vol. II, pp. 122-123, cat. C14, repr. p. 122
  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 41, color plate; pp. 99, 319, repr. b/w cat. no. 628
  • Eric C. Graf, "When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes's Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish Orientalism", Diacritics (1999), vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 68-85, repr. as fig. 1
  • Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance: Burgundian Art Across Europe, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 265-266, repr. in b/w as fig. 83
  • Eric C. Graf, "The Pomegranate of Don Quixote 1.9", Writing for the Eyes in the Spanish Golden Age, ed. Frederick A. de Armas, Bucknell University Press (Lewisburg, 2004), pp. 42-62, p. 55, repr. as fig. 14
  • Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: the impact of Netherlandish painting, 1400-1500, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), pp. 206-207, repr. as fig. 217
  • Barbara Rizza Mellin, "The Harvard University Art Museums", The Middlesex Beat (March 2006), pp. 6-7, ill. p. 6
  • Everett Fahy, "Why Not Girolamo del Santo?", Il più dolce lavorare che sia: Mélanges en l'honneur de Mauro Natale, ed. Frédéric Elsig, Silvana Editoriale (Milan, 2009), p. 40
  • Greg Stone, Artful Business: 50 Lessons from Creative Geniuses (Boston, 2016), p. 88, ill. (color)
  • Elena V. Shabliy, ed., Representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary in World Literature and Art, Lexington Books (Lanham, Maryland, 2017), repr. on p. xvii

Exhibition History

  • Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/13/1977 - 08/31/1977
  • 32Q: 2500 Renaissance, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu