Fragment from an Adoration of the Christ Child

Inscriptions

Not signed.

Label

This damaged work was cut from a larger devotional painting. Mary’s tilted head and crossed arms suggest she was placed in relation to another figure, perhaps the Archangel Gabriel at a scene of the Annunciation or the Christ Child in an image of adoration. The painting has also lost many of its paint layers, revealing the bare panel beneath. This painting uses largely accessible pigments, such as azurite, now decayed to black, for the Virgin’s robe instead of more costly ultramarine. Although now very abraded, the golden background augmented with punched details would have made this work a splendid vision of Mary.

From the 2025 exhibition Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400–1800, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art

Course History

HIST 96.39, Saints and Material Devotion, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Fall 2021

HIST 96.39, Saints and Relics, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Fall 2021

SART 31/SART 72, Painting II/III, Jen Caine, Winter 2022

Music 42.01, Early Classical Music, Richard Beaudoin, Fall 2023

Italian 33.01, Religion 32.02, Dante: The Divine Comedy, Danielle Callegari, Fall 2024

Exhibition History

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400–1800, Harrington Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 6 - Fall 2026.

In Pursuit of Attribution: A New Look at the College Collection, Carpenter Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 16-October 23, 1977.

Publication History

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press, Cambrigde, Massachusetts, 1972, p. 246.

Published References

Laura Malaspina and Antonella Ricagni, "Per Antonio Cicognara," Arte Cristiana, vol. 82 (1994): 101-122 (at 101, 107-108, 110-111, note 6, fig.4). Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Bruggen Israels, eds., The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti (Florence 2015), p. 197

Provenance

Acquired by Helen Sears Bradley (1889-1966) [Mrs. J. D. Cameron Bradley], by 1938; Estate of The Right Reverend John Thomson Dallas (1880-1961); given to present collection, 1962.

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Subjects