(Borgo San Sepolcro c. 1430–1495 Siena)
The Madonna and Child,
tempera on gold ground panel, 53 x 35 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Berlin

The dimensions of the present panel and the compositional scheme are typical of Sienese paintings intended for private devotion, whilst its careful execution and refined details indicate that it was destined for prominent clients. The rich decoration of the gold ground displays pouncing both in the halos and the frieze along the borders, all of which also occur in other works executed by Matteo di Giovanni. The Madonna is depicted head and shoulders, sumptuously clad in a red robe decorated with gems and pearls, and in a blue cloak with a gold rim. She holds the naked Child, who is playing with a transparent veil that is partly wrapped around her belt.

In its robust plasticism of forms and strongly accentuated contours, the present painting displays the typical style of the Sienese master’s mature period; an artistic phase marked by the depiction of the expression of intense feelings that can be seen in the altarpiece depicting the Assumption of the Virgin in the National Gallery in London (1474) and in the monumental Placidi Polyptych in San Domenico, Siena (1476), as well as in the celebrated Massacre of the Innocents (1482), originally executed for the Church of Sant’Agostino in Siena and currently conserved at the museum complex of Santa Maria della Scala. Besides these works, the same pictorial execution and typology is also comparable with the Saint Barbara altarpiece, also in San Domenico (1479) and in the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels at the Museo Diocesano in Siena, originally in the Church of Sant’Eugenia outside the Pispini Gate.

In this particularly inspired phase of his activity, Matteo di Giovanni can be regarded as the most important Sienese painter of his time, thanks to a very personal synthesis in which Mantegna’s influence, absorbed through the Tuscan works of Girolamo da Cremona and Liberale da Verona, and the direct influence of Antonio Pollaiolo’s style merge together with an elegance inherited from the great artistic tradition of Siena.

The present painting by Matteo di Giovanni is an important example of the Sienese School of painting in the second half of the 15th century.