(Vienna 1731–1808 Rome)
The Madonna and Child with a shepherd,
oil on canvas, oval, 126 x 156 cm, framed

Provenance:
Palazzo Borghese, Rome, at least until 1832;
with Chaucer Fine Arts, London, 1990;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 21 April 2005, lot 60 (as Anton von Maron);
Private European collection

Exhibited:
London, Chaucer Fine Arts, Old Master Paintings and selected works by Gian Paolo Panini, 26 October - 14 December 1990, no. 23 (as Anton von Maron)

Literature:
E. Fumagalli, Palazzo Borghese: committenza e decorazione privata, Rome 1994, p. 171;
A. Cesareo, Anton von Maron: ‘The first portrait painter at present in Rome’, in: Antologia di Belle Arti, 2007, p. 111, illustrated p. 112, fig. 11 (as Anton von Maron);
I. Schmittmann, Anton von Maron (1731-1808): Leben und Werk, Munich 2013, cat. no. 100, fig. 105, pl. 14b (as Anton von Maron)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 61584 (as Anton von Maron).

We are grateful to Marina Minozzi for her assistance in researching the provenance of the present painting.

The provenance of the Borghese collection for the present painting is supported by a drawing by Nicolas Mosman (1728–1787) in the British Museum, London (fig. 1), which records the author of the work as Anton von Maron and inscribes its location as in ‘Palazzo Borghese Roma’ (fig. 2). According to Fumagalli (see literature), a painting of the Holy Family was executed by von Maron for a chapel in the apartment of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1734–1782). Further archival studies have revealed that in the 1832 inventory of the apartment of Anna Maria Salviati, the wife of Marcantonio IV Borghese, an oval painting by von Maron representing the Madonna and Child and a Saint is recorded (AAV. Arch. Borghese, no. 458).

Another oval version of this subject, painted en grisaille is in the Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest (inv. no. 470) and was formerly in the Esterházy collection with an attribution to Anton Raphael Mengs (exhibited in Rome, Palazzo Braschi, Artisti Austriaci a Roma dal Barocco alla Secessione, March - April 1972, cat. no. T 32 A). In the catalogue of this exhibition Steffi Roettgen corrected the attribution of the Budapest painting, identifying it as one of the first multi-figure compositions by Anton von Maron and dating it to 1771–1773. Additionally, she advanced the notion that the grisaille in Budapest was the modello for the painting formerly in the Borghese collection (see op. cit., footnote 33).

Monochrome cartoons appear to have been part of the regular working practice of Anton Raphael Mengs’ studio in which von Maron was trained, and indeed, the Budapest painting was traditionally attributed to him. As Roettgen has emphasised, in details such as the figure of the shepherd, von Maron may have been influenced by the Adoration of the Shepherds by Mengs in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, painted during his sojourn as court painter to the Spanish crown from 1770 to 1773 (see S. Roettgen, Anton Raphael Mengs 1728-1779, Munich 1999, vol. I, p. 49, no. 19).

In the present painting, Mary is dressed in her canonical colours, she wears a brilliant blue mantle over a red dress, which counter the sober and attenuated secondary colours worn by the shepherd on the left. Mary wears a veil, similar to a turban, which is the typical headwear of Sybilles: models for this can be found among the Sybille, painted by Mengs in 1761, or those by the Baroque painters Guercino and Domenichino as well as in Guido Reni’s Susannah and the Elders in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. N.G. 196). Like the Christ Child, Mary turns toward the shepherd; the three-figure group fills the entire oval form of the canvas, the Child is at the exact centre of the composition and the luminous colour of his skin serves to draw the attention to him.