New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Thursday that it has acquired a recently rediscovered Renaissance painting of major art-historical significance.
During a recent conservation, multiple layers of paint were removed to reveal the figure of St. John the Evangelist in the lower right part of the canvas. With the overlay gone, the painting has now been identified as Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist (1512/1513) by the 16th century painter Rosso Fiorentino. The attribution of the painting has previously been questioned, with some scholars attributing it to Rosseau and others to a contemporary. It is also dated to 1520 and is titled madonna and child.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put the work, thought to have been lost for centuries, on display in its European Paintings section.
in his foundational text Lives of the finest painters, sculptors and architectsGiorgio Vasari, often considered the first art historian, described Rosso as having received his first major commission, a fresco. Assumption of Mary (1513) At the Chiostrino dei Voti in Santissima Annunziata, Florence, a gift was given to the patron of the work, Fra Jacopo of the Servite Order, “a painting of the Virgin and Child, and a bust of St. John the Evangelist.”
“Rosso’s paintings are extremely rare, with only about two dozen in existence, and many of his most famous works remain undocumented or unfinished,” Stephan Wolohojian, head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European painting department, said in a statement. “Vasari’s discussion of the painting artist lifeArt History is often referred to as the first art history book, which gives the work an additional character as it has been part of the art historical discourse since the birth of the discipline.
Vasari called his and Rosso’s method modern craftsmanshipor “modern style”. The word would eventually become mannerism.
In typical Mannerist style, Rosseau’s renderings of his painting’s subjects were characterized by exaggeration. This is often seen as a response to, and in some cases even a criticism of, the sense of harmony and proportion created by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael during the High Renaissance. Although it looks gimmicky at first, Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist There are some deliberately less ornate decorations – for example, the coy smirk on baby Jesus’ face and his muscular butt.
Max Hollein, director and chief executive of the Met, said of the rediscovered painting: “Using unusual figure positions and bold gestures, Rosseau transforms a familiar devotional genre into a passionate encounter that draws the viewer into a complex interplay of seeing, feeling and believing.”
Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, later known as “Rosso Fiorentino”, or “Florentine Red Hair,” because of his red hair. He was born in Florence in 1494 and joined the Arte degli Speziali in 1517 at the age of 23. The following year he received his breakthrough commission, the 1518 Altarpiece to the Virgin Mary. With this work he established himself as one of the most important Mannerist artists of the era.
Little is known about the artist’s early life, although he spent the first ten years of his career before moving to Rome and finally to France, where he died in 1540 at the age of 45. In France, he became court painter to Francis I and, together with Francesco Primaticcio, founded the First School of Fontainebleau.
“This painting is a rare and pivotal early work by one of the most important painters of the 16th century, stunning in its experimental ambition and psychological intensity,” Hollein added in the statement. “The rediscovery of this work reshapes our understanding of Rosso’s early work and the emergence of more expressive and dynamic works in 16th-century Florentine painting.”
