Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst

Florentine artist (after Luca della Robbia?) Virgin and Child with four Angels ca. 1430-1450 Bronze Diameter: 18 cm Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Skulpturensammlung, Inv. SKS 136. Bode-Museum, storage. Provenance Venice, Guggenheim (1887); Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Altes Museum (1887-1896); Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Neues Museum (1896-1904); Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (1904-1939); Berlin, storage (1939-1945); Merkers, storage (1945); Wiesbaden, Central Collecting Point (1945-1956); West Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Museum Dahlem (1956-1990); Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Museum Dahlem (1990-1997); Berlin, storage (1997-2006); Berlin, Skulpturensammlung/Bode-Museum (since 2006). Acquisition Bought in Venice in 1887 from the dealer Guggenheim. The acquisition file (1235/89) is in the Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Other versions • London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Inv. 7694A-1861. Partially gilt bronze carved in relief. Reverse side of a mirror. • Vienna, Liechtenstein collection. • Formerly London, Christie’s, Winter 2005/Spring 2006 (as mentioned in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s website, consulted on 23 February 2016: collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O69613/virgin-and-child-with-angels-mirror-robbia-luca-della/). Bibliography Bode 1904 Wilhelm Bode, Die italienischen Bronzen, 2nd edition, Berlin, Reimer, 1904, n. 430: Florentine artist related with Ghiberti and Luca della Robbia. (reference to be checked). Schubring 1907 Paul Schubring, Donatello. Des Meisters Werke in 277 Abbildungen, Stuttgart and Leipzig, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907, pp. 169, 201: close to a tondo in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (Inv. RF 943); follower of Donatello, perhaps Giovanni da Pisa. Bange 1922 E. F. Bange, Die Italienischen Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, Zweiter Teil: Reliefs und Plaketten, Berlin and Leipzig, Walter de Gruyter, 1922, p. 1 cat. 4: school of Donatello, ca. 1450. Radcliffe and Avery 1976 ed. 1988 Anthony Radcliffe and Charles Avery, “The ‘Chellini Madonna’ by Donatello”, The Burlington Magazine, CXVIII, n° 118, June 1976, pp. 377-387 now in: Charles Avery, Studies in European Sculpture II, London, Chriestie’s, 1988, p. 46: close to the Fortnum Madonna by Luca della Robbia in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, dated 1428; most implausibly associated with Donatello about 1450, earlier and not far from Ghiberti’s bronze doors. Radcliffe 1985 Anthony F. Radcliffe in Italian Renaissance Sculpture in the Time of Donatello, exh. cat. (Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 23 October 1985-5 January 1986), Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1985, p. 152: the version in the Victoria and Albert Museum is the only one to have a negative image on its reverse. Besides the Berlin version, mentions also the Liechtenstein one. Warren 2014 Jeremy Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture. A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Volume 2. Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum Publications, 2014, p. 387: related to the Fortnum Madonna by Luca della Robbia in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Comment The Virgin is seated in the center of the composition; it is impossible to distinguish her seat. Her son Jesus is standing on her thigh, his right arm flung around his mother’s neck. The central group is surrounded by two standing angels holding a garland and two kneeling musician angels playing the lute, all of them on clouds. Elements from the composition such as the wings of the standing angels or the cloak of the Virgin overlap the wreath framing the scene. The works was first associated by Bode 1904 with Luca della Robbia and Lorenzo Ghiberti; it was reminiscent of the Fortnum Madonna in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, almost invariably attributed to Luca (see a derivation of it in Berlin: Inv. SKS 2303). Schubring 1907 thought that the work was by a follower of Donatello; this may have been so because Donatello conceived the first known plaquettes of the Italian Renaissance, but also because the motif of the angels holding a garland actually occurs in a composition by Donatello (see the tondo with the Virgin and Child once in Berlin, Inv. KFM M 7). The Antique motif of the wreath can also be found in many works by Donatello, from the base of the Putti made for the Font of the Siena Cathedral (see Inv. SKS 2653), to the base of the bronze David in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. However, the symmetrical disposition of the figures and the pedestrian drapery are far from Donatello’s oeuvre. The medallion should then more reasonably be linked to an invention by Luca della Robbia, and was possibly cast in Florence in the 1430s or 1440s. Neville Rowley (24 February 2016)