MASP

By Luciano Migliaccio
Half-length sculpture of the Madonna and Child with Four Angels, seated on a throne, with a luminous oval halo. She holds the Child on her lap and touches his foot with her left hand; four angels bearing lilies surround the throne. Immediately below is a small almost illegible sign reading something like: “Salve Regina Angelorum” and a faded insignia. The inscription may have been added to the work at a later date. Umbrian popular religious literature was probably the source for the iconography, recalling the famous verses of the Ode of Friar Jacopone of Todi – “Son, son, pure lily” – in which the image of the flowers symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ, an innocent victim. There are colored terra-cotta replicas of this composition in the National Museum in Bargello, Florence, and several other versions in stucco, such as one housed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Valentiner 1951, p. 72). Finally, there is an arched red terra-cotta replica, whereabouts unknown, recorded in a photo that is preserved in the Deutsches Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (negative 463871). The relief on display at Masp was modeled on Bargello’s. The image is very similar to a marble relief in the Louvre titled Madonna Auvillers, of which there is a replica in stucco in the Thyssen’s Collection (K 14), and displays variations in the veil, in the hairstyle and in the position of the Madonna’s right hand, as well as in the figure of the angel to the left. The analysis of the work on display at Masp must, therefore, be linked to this group of works. The bibliography is unanimous in attributing the composition to Florentine sculptor Agostino di Duccio, dating it to between 1457 and 1461 (Bacci p. XVI, Pope-Hennessy, p. 325), the time of the sculptor’s sojourn in Perugia. Only Brunelli (1907, p. 147), followed by Adolfo Venturi (1908, p. 406), had misgivings about the Louvre’s relief, and did not discard the possibility of it being an 18th-century forgery. According to Pope-Hennessy, and subsequent literature agrees with him, the Madonna Auvillers is undoubtedly an autographed work by Agostino di Duccio. According to Radcliffe (1992, pp. 56-57), the latter was the model for Thyssen’s stucco, while Bargello’s terra-cotta, displaying all the characteristics of free clay modeling, could have been Agostino’s first idea for the work in marble at the Louvre, and executed later, as has been suggested by Michel (1903, p. 103). Consequently, the work on display at Masp would be a sketch based on Florentine works, with dating unsettled. Bargello’s composition displays a less skillful execution of the concepts that mark the Louvre’s marble and may have been modeled on it in the master’s workshop, perhaps during his lifetime. It is credited to Agostino’s last active period. In fact, it lacks the constantly linear handling of the drapery typical of San Bernardino’s reliefs, while echoes of the Florentine painting of the late 60s may be observed, illustrated by Botticelli’s first Madonnas – such as the one in the Louvre with five angels, dating back to approximately 1469. Overall, there are signs of Agostino’s conversion at the time to Umbria’s figurative culture, strongly marked by Sienese coloration in the style of Matteo Giovanni and, in particular, his association with painter Pier Matteo d’ Amelia. On the other hand, there is a replica of the Madonna and Child in a painting on the wall of Pietro Cesi’s tomb, in Narni Cathedral, dated by Todini as c.1477, resembling Pier Matteo’s Madonna, which belonged to the polyptych of the Bode Museum in Berlin, dating from 1481, and another is housed at the Mackley Gallery, in London. The face of the Madonna can be compared to the faces of the reliefs showing Tobias and the Angel in the Acquapendente cathedral, and also to that representing Charity over the c.1478 sepulcher of bishop Geraldini in the Duomo de Amelia.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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