(Venice 1519–1594)
Madonna and Child
oil on canvas, 92 x 72.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Baron Alfred de Rothschild (1842–1918), Paris;
1927 Durlacher Brothers New York;
sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art on 27 January 1927 (John Huntington Collection, inv. no. 27.488);
deacquisitioned in 2011;
sale Sotheby’s New York, 28 January 2011, lot 38 (as Follower of Jacopo Tintoretto);
Private collection, USA

Exhibited:
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Century of Progress Exhibition, 1 June - 1 November 1933, no. 136;
Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition, 26 June - 4 October 1936, no. 169; New York, Durlacher Brothers, A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Jacopo Robusti, Il Tintoretto, 1519-1594, 20 February - 18 March 1939, no. 7;
Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Old Masters, 1946; Winnipeg, Winnipeg Art Gallery Association;
Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance, 1400-1600, 4 October - 15 December 1953, no. 31 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Venetian Tradition, 1956, no. 47

Literature:
Art Digest, 1 April 1927, p. 10;
The American Magazine of Art, vol. 18, no. 4, 1927, p. 206–207, illustrated (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
W. M. Milliken, “Madonna and Child” by Jacopo Tintoretto in the John Huntington Collection, in: The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 14, 1927, pp. 31-33, reproduced p. 29 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
W. M. Milliken, A Tintoretto for Cleveland, in: The Burlington Magazine, vol. 51, 1927, p. 55, illustrated (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
A. Venturi, Storia dell’Arte Italiana, IX., La pittura del Cinquecento, parte IV., Milan 1929, p. 684, fig. 486 (as collaborator of Tintoretto, Marietta?);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, London 1932, p. 558;
The Connoisseur, vol. 103, 1939, p. 216;
A. Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. IX, Milan 1901-1940, p. 684, reproduced fig. 486;
A. McComb, A Tintoretto discovered in Minneapolis, in: International Studio, vol. 98, 1931, p. 37, reproduced fig. 1;
L. Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, vol. III, New York 1933, reproduced pl. 533. W. M. Milliken, World Art at Cleveland, in: The American Magazine of Art, vol. 29, no. 7, 1936, p. 432 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
M. Breuning, Magazine of Art, vol. 32, part I, 1939, pp. 98-99, reproduced p. 432; E. von der Bercken, Die Gemälde des Jacopo Tintoretto, Munich 1942, no. 66, p. 107, reproduced p. 150 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
A. Frankfurter, Venice, or, The Fluent Brush, in: Art News, vol. LV, 1956, reproduced p. 34; B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Venetian School, London 1957, vol. I, p. 171 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
P. de Vecchi, L’opera completa de Tintoretto, Milan 1970, no. 198 (as Jacopo Tintoretto); B. B. Fredericksen & F. Zeri, Census of the Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge 1972, pp. 199, 338, 573 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
R. Pallucchini / P. Rossi, Tintoretto, le opera sacre e profane, Milan 1982, vol. I, p. 195, no. 308; vol. II, p. 490, fig. 403 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland 1993, p. 238, reproduced;
Museo Nacional del Prado, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Jacopo Tintoretto, Supplemental List 2: other Paintings from the Tintoretto Studio ca. 1550–1594, Madrid 2007, p. 143

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for suggesting the attribution after examination of the painting in the original. He suggests dating the work to the 1560s.

The present Madonna and Child closely resembles a painting in a private collection (see R. Palluchini, op. cit., p. 195, cat. no. 307, fig. 402), which is of slightly greater size, but also features the Madonna and Child against a background that brings to mind bright, ethereal light. There is also a horizontal version in the collection of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (inv. no. 1927.192) that depicts the Infant Christ in a similar position, although there are a number of other significant features that differentiate this rendering from the present painting, among which the way that the figure of the Virgin is depicted in a tilted forward position.

Jacopo Tintoretto was one of the most prolific painters working in Venice in the later 16th century and he employed many assistants to achieve his commissions. In his later production relatively few paintings can be attributed entirely to Tintoretto himself.