Madonna of the Milk

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Wood sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 4

Inventory

PV 01482

Material and technique

Sculpted poplar wood, paint and gilding

Author

Marchigian School

Dating

Late 14th century

Dimensions

153 x 42.5 x 43 cm.; crown: 23.5 cm. diameter, 10 cm. high

Origin

San Demetrio ne' Vestini; Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo (1920)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

This sculpture came from the church of S. Giovanni di San Demetrio ne’ Vestini (AQ), as did the Annunciation of the Virgin also held at Palazzo Venezia. It depicts an Enthroned Madonna with Child, who is seated on her right knee in three quarter view but with his face front on to the viewer; he is touching his mother’s uncovered chest as he tries to offer her an apple, in line with the iconography of the Madonna del Latte, or Suckling Madonna, which was very widespread in wooden sculpture: one thinks, for example, of the wonderful example by Andrea Pisano in the Museo di San Matteo in Pisa. Compared to the latter, however, this version lacks any note of intimacy between the two, who are instead engaged independently and separately with the viewer. Hieratic and unemotional, the Virgin, whose pale flesh tone is achieved by a mixture of white lead and cinnabar, is wearing a red tunic, perhaps a varnish, covered by a long golden mantle that is green inside, “which falls in casual folds to her feet, in a highly Gothic manner” (Hermanin 1948); the Child, on the other hand, is dressed in white with an orange drape, consisting of red lead (FORS analysis by ICVBC-CNR in Florence and XRF of Laboratorio Mida in Rome). Hermanin attributed the sculpture to a 14th century Abruzzese master (1948), while Santangelo (1954), who defined it generically as a work from central Italy, rightly made comparisons with works from Le Marche, such as the Madonna in the Chiesa del Suffragio in Offida and that in S. Biagio in Caprile in Campodonico (Fabriano), as well as the fescoes in Offida, dating it to the end of the 14th century. Until a few decades ago, the Virgin was exhibited in the museum with a false crown, which is still held in the museum. Scientific analysis carried out in 2990 by IVALSA-CNR in Florence identified the wood used as poplar (Populus sp.).

Grazia Maria Fachechi 

Bibliography

F. Hermanin, Il Palazzo di Venezia, Rome 1948, p. 267; A. Santangelo (ed.), Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1954, p. 69