The Madonna teaching the Child to read,
tempera on gold ground on panel, 54.5 x 37 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Godefroy Brauer (1857-1923), Nice (as Pintoricchio);
Private Collection, Paris 1930;
Private Collection, Switzerland

The painting shows an unusual variant of the subject of the Madonna teaching the Child to read. The Madonna is depicted with the Child in her arms, dressed only in a scarf, who is asleep leaning on her shoulder while holding an open book. The Madonna’s gaze and the gesture of protection of her left hand accentuate the intimacy of the depiction, which seems almost to be a Renaissance interpretation of the subject of the ‘affectionate Madonna’ from the Byzantine tradition of painting. This work was once considered to be by Pintoricchio, probably due to its ‘ornate’ and somewhat profane style, however this work can be compared to the rare production of Filippino Lippi’s workshop from his Roman period between 1488 and 1494. The type of figure and the pictorial layout follow the mature style of Filippino, with reference to his models in the frescoes of the Carafa chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, completed in 1493.

The rich decoration of the gold background, of Spanish taste and of a type extraneous to the Florentine artistic customs, is an indication of a style of the painting prevalent in Rome and this work can be compared to the production of various Umbrian-Roman artists active for the Borgia court: including Pintoricchio, Antoniazzo Romano, Piermatteo d’Amelia, Antonio da Viterbo known as Pastura, as well as the ‘Master of the Madonna of Liverpool’ and the ‘Master of the Madonna di Orte’. This work may be by a collaborator of Filippino Lippi present in his workshop as it has close stylistic affinities with the group of works gathered under the name of the ‘Master of Memphis’ (based on a drawing of an altarpiece in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence, currently conserved in the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Kress Collection (no. 61.190) - see P. Zambrano/J. K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, pp. 610-11), considered to be Filippino Lippi’s most significant pupil together with Raffaellino del Garbo.