Renaissance Madonnas. From private collections

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts presents the third installment of the exhibition project "Renaissance Madonnas. From Private Collections." Beginning June 30, visitors will be able to see "Madonna and Child" by Luca Signorelli, a prominent master of the Early Renaissance and an artist of the Umbrian school. This series of solo exhibitions introduces masterpieces of Italian Renaissance painting held in private collections in Russia. The Madonna and Child is the subject of all the works in this series and a central image in Italian art, interpreted by each artist in their own unique way. Curatorial lectures will be held in the Italian Courtyard on June 30 and July 14 at 6:30 PM. Victoria Markova will discuss the lives and works of Luca Signorelli and Francesco Granacci.

Signorelli’s painting, featured at the exhibition, was created during the artist’s period of artistic maturity. The depiction of the Madonna and Child on her knees occupies the entire space of the painting and is brought as close to the viewer as possible, while the density of forms, defined by clear contours and seemingly tangible, seems intended to create the impression of an almost physical presence of the figures. Artists from Tuscany and Umbria considered drawing to be the foundation of their method, and Signorelli’s painting is a compelling example. Among his private commissions and works of similar date are the composition "Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Joseph" from the Rospigliosi-Pallavicini collection in Rome, as well as the tondo "Holy Family" from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The work’s history is quite remarkable: until the late 1920s, it was in Berlin and at one point belonged to the German art historian Wilhelm von Bode. He was a leading scholar and the creator of the collection at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (since 1956, the Bode Museum), founded in 1904. After Bode’s death in 1929, the painting went to Munich and then to England. In the post-war period, it disappeared from the attention of specialists and only resurfaced in the early 1990s. In 2012, "Madonna and Child" was exhibited at a major Signorelli monographic exhibition in Perugia, Orvieto, and Città di Castello.

Victoria Markova, exhibition curator, Doctor of Art History, professor, and chief researcher at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts’s Old Masters Art Department, said:
"The "Renaissance Madonnas. From Private Collections" project allows us to compare the works of two outstanding painters of the Early Renaissance. Comparing the paintings of Bellini and Signorelli not only reveals the differences in the personalities and creative individualities of the two masters but also allows us to understand the uniqueness of the different artistic centers, which at the time were considered independent states. In Bellini’s painting, the poetry of the image is born from the harmony of color and the light-filled space. Signorelli’s thinking was different, focusing exclusively on the characters, while all other elements were rendered irrelevant.

Signorelli (real name Luca d’Egidio di Ventura) was born into a family of artists, several generations of whom practiced art. According to Giorgio Vasari and the renowned mathematician Luca Pacioli, the artist trained in the workshop of Piero della Francesca. At the same time, he was greatly influenced by the Florentine master Antonio Pollaiuolo, renowned for his mastery of depicting the human body in motion. In Signorelli’s works, both easel and monumental, the human figure was also the primary focus. Among the artist’s most significant early works is his participation in the 1481 frescoing of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, alongside other Florentine and Umbrian painters. In Florence, Signorelli served as court master to the Medici. For Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1490 he painted his most famous easel work, The Education of Pan, which perished during the Second World War in Berlin, as well as the tondo Madonna and Child (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

Signorelli achieved fame thanks to the monumental frescoes he executed for monasteries and cities in central Italy. His most celebrated work is rightfully the frescoes for the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio, also known as the New Chapel, in the Orvieto Cathedral, which he began at the very end of the 15th century. The multi-figure compositions on the theme of the Apocalypse that fill the walls demonstrate the artist’s mastery of conveying the plasticity of bodies and movement, reflecting the inner states of the characters. It is no wonder that Michelangelo himself praised the work.

The exhibition project "Renaissance Madonnas. From Private Collections" will run until July 26. The first in the series of exhibitions at the Pushkin Museum was a work by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s students, "Madonna with Two Playing Children," followed by Giovanni Bellini’s "Madonna and Child." The final work on display will be a work by Francesco Granacci. Each solo exhibition lasts two weeks. The project offers a deeper understanding of the humanistic essence of Renaissance art and its exceptional artistic significance.