Madonna and Child
oil on gold ground panel, 55 x 45 cm, framed

Provenance:

Collection Professor Franz Streber (1806–1864), Bad Tölz, Munich;
Private collection, Germany (since the early 1950s)

According to an inscription on an old photograph at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, the present painting was once considered a work of the Munich school dating from around 1490. It was later attributed to the Salzburg painter Marx Reichlich (circa 1460–1520), a student of Michael Pacher. Even if this attribution does not seem entirely plausible, certain stylistic analogies with the art of Pacher and his followers suggest that the painting was made in Tyrol. Ludwig Meyer has suggested that the composition and the Virgin’s garment are based on the celebrated Madonna in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. A Byzantine work from the 12th century, it was described as a work by Luke the Evangelist by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478. In the following years, such Southern German painters as Jan Polack, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Hans Holbein the Elder based their Madonnas on Roman models, which is also apparent in the present panel.

Professor Franz Streber owned a collection of Gothic panel paintings, most of which he had purchased at auctions from the state collections (for example, in Schleissheim in 1852).

The present painting is an interesting example of the popular pictorial motifs that were widely spread through Europe at the time. Pious Christians who were unable to see the Madonna, allegedly painted by the hand of Saint Luke the Evangelist, in Rome because of the great distance commissioned regional artists to produce copies, probably on the basis of a print.

Provenance:

Collection Professor Franz Streber (1806–1864), Bad Tölz, Munich;
Private collection, Germany (since the early 1950s)

According to an inscription on an old photograph at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, the present painting was once considered a work of the Munich school dating from around 1490. It was later attributed to the Salzburg painter Marx Reichlich (circa 1460–1520), a student of Michael Pacher. Even if this attribution does not seem entirely plausible, certain stylistic analogies with the art of Pacher and his followers suggest that the painting was made in Tyrol. Ludwig Meyer has suggested that the composition and the Virgin’s garment are based on the celbrated Madonna in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. A Byzantine work from the 12th century, it was described as a work by Luke the Evangelist by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478. In the following years, such Southern German painters as Jan Polack, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Hans Holbein the Elder based their Madonnas on Roman models, which is also apparent in the present panel.

Professor Franz Streber owned a collection of Gothic panel paintings, most of which he had purchased at auctions or from the state collections (for example, in Schleissheim in 1852).

The present painting is an interesting example of the popular pictorial motifs that were widely spread through Europe at the time. Pious Christians who were unable to see the Madonna, allegedly painted by the hand of Saint Luke the Evangelist, in Rome because of the great distance commissioned regional artists to produce copies, probably on the basis of a print.