Madonna and Child

Madonna and Child is one of Artemisia Gentileschi's earliest surviving paintings, dated to around 1613, when she was about twenty. The Virgin sits on a plain wooden chair, dressed in pink and about to nurse the Child, who turns toward her and touches her face with his left hand. The most striking feature is the scale: Mary's figure fills nearly the whole canvas and seems to lean toward the viewer, while the Child, with tousled blond hair, appears to have been modeled on a real child. A restoration in 1969 and 1970 removed retouching and later layers of paint, revealing deep maroon shadows in the dress and the blue mantle. For a long time the work was attributed to several Italian artists. Its authorship was uncertain because another Madonna of identical size hangs in the Palazzo Pitti, which was once considered Gentileschi's; the Spada version is now judged more likely to be hers. An inventory of 1637 helped reconstruct its history and explains how it passed into the Spada family.

Painter

Artemisia Gentileschi

Date

1612

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

116 × 86 cm

Museum

Galleria Spada, Rome

Genre

religious art

Depicts

boy, Mary, woman, mother, Christ Child

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