Virgin and Child before a Landscape

This oil-on-panel painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Cima da Conegliano shows the Virgin and Child before an open landscape, a devotional theme widely found in Italian religious painting of the period. The work belongs to the John G. Johnson collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which acquired it in 1917. The sources consulted do not give a precise date of execution, and the record places it in 1485, so that chronology should be taken with some caution. The picture's interest lies in the relationship between the figures and the landscape, which places mother and child in a calm natural setting rather than an enclosed architectural space. The panel allows us to appreciate the painter's handling of light and colour within an intimate composition suited to private devotion. For a visitor new to Cima da Conegliano, it is a useful example of a more gentle, approachable religious painting.

Painter

Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano

Date

1485

Medium

oil paint, panel

Dimensions

60 × 48 cm

Museum

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia County

Genre

religious art

Depicts

boy, Mary, woman, mother, Christ Child

Share:FacebookWhatsApp