The Madonna and Child with an Angel
attributed to Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora (Florence c.1445 - Florence 1497)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1480 - 1500
Materials
Oil on panel (pine)
Measurements
464 x 368 mm (18 1/4 x 14 1/2 in)
Place of origin
Florence
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446817
Caption
This painting has been difficult to attribute because of its poor condition, and because some parts, such as the Christ Child and the angel’s head, have been considerably retouched. In the past, it has been attributed to Filippino Lippi; the artist invented by Bernard Berenson, Amico di Sandro; and the workshop of Botticelli. According the second Viscount Bearsted, Modigliani, the Italian artist, agreed with the attribution to Filippino! The picture was formerly owned by Gustav Adolf von Ingenheim, son of Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. He had acquired some of his pictures in Italy and received others as gifts from his half-brother, King Wilhelm III Prussia, from the Solly Collection. That collection of some 3000 pictures was acquired by the German government in 1821, 677 of which were set aside by Waagen as worthy of exhibition in the new Royal Gallery.
Summary
Oil painting on panel (pine), The Madonna and Child with an Angel attributed to Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora (Florence 1445 - Florence 1497), circa 1480 - 1500. The Madonna, wearing a red robe and dark green cloak, stands in an open landscape; she bends forward to receive the Child from an angel, dressed in pale blue, who kneels at the left; in the distance is a town on a lake.
Provenance
Count Gustav Adolf Wilhelm Graf, von Ingenheim (1789 – 1855), at the Palais Voss, Berlin (Wilhelmstraβe 78), and Villa Ingenheim, Potsdam; his widow, Eugénie de Thierry, Countess von Ingenheim (1808 - 1881); in 1883 at Schloss Reisewitz, on the Neiβe, Silesia (the former residence of Eugénie de Thierry, acquired 1870); thence by descent; A. S. Drey of Munich [possibly in 1922 en masse with other pictures, and thus escaping the looting of Schloss Reisewitz in 1945]; Marcel von Nemes (1866-1930) (see Bulletin of Bachstitz Gallery) who owned it in 1925, the year in which it was bought by Lord Bearsted from the Bachstitz Gallery for £5,300; to the Hon. Walter Samuel, future 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1885 – 1948; succ. 1927); by whom Given with Upton House to the National Trust by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882 – 1948), in 1948, shortly before his death
Credit line
Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: a label with the number 1058
Makers and roles
attributed to Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora (Florence c.1445 - Florence 1497) , artist previously catalogued as attributed to Filippino Lippi (Prato c.1457 – Florence 1504), artist
