Enthroned Madonna and Child
Byzantine 13th Century (possibly from Constantinople)c. 1250/1275
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
The composition of this Virgin and Child is loosely based on the _Hodegetria_, one of the more powerful and enduring icon types of the Orthodox Christian church. The Virgin gestures toward the child to show him as the “way” (_hodos_ in Greek), the source of salvation. The throne and her red shoes present her as the Queen of Heaven, and the archangels in the roundels beside her hold imperial regalia, which are typical attributes of archangels. The first of this type, housed in the Hodegon monastery in Constantinople, was an active part of civic and religious life in the Byzantine capital. Said to produce miracles daily, it was taken out of the monastery every Tuesday so the public could see it. It was invoked against plague and carried by imperial armies as a talisman in battle.
Expert opinion differs about the origin of this painting (known as the Kahn Madonna after an earlier owner) and the National Gallery of Art’s _Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne_, also of Byzantine origin. The soft shadows of this Virgin’s face and her tender expression are paralleled in a mosaic of Mary in the great basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople).
Byzantine art made a powerful impact on 13th- and 14th-century Italian painting, which emphasizes the spiritual world of Paradise, with elongated and weightless figures, more like spirits than physical human beings, skies of heavenly gold, and flat, stylized patterning of drapery. The gold striations that define folds in clothing, the round volume of Mary’s veiled head, and Jesus’s frontal pose—looking more like a miniature adult than a child—are all part of the Byzantine tradition.
- Title: Enthroned Madonna and Child
- Creator: Byzantine 13th Century (possibly from Constantinople)
- Date Created: c. 1250/1275
- Physical Dimensions: painted surface: 124.8 x 70.8 cm (49 1/8 x 27 7/8 in.) overall: 130.7 x 77.1 cm (51 7/16 x 30 3/8 in.) framed: 130.5 x 77 x 6 cm (51 3/8 x 30 5/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
- Provenance: Said to have come from a church, or convent, in Calahorra (province of La Rioja, Spain);[1] (art market, Madrid), in 1912. (Herbert P. Weissberger, Madrid).[2] (Emile Pares, Madrid, Paris, and New York); (his sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, 18-19 February 1915, 2nd day, no. 306, as by Giovanni Cimabue); (Emile Pares, Madrid, Paris, and New York);[3] sold 26 November 1915 to (F. Kleinberger & Co., New York).[4] Otto Kahn [1867-1934], New York, by 1917;[5] by inheritance to his widow, Addie Wolff Kahn [d. 1949], New York;[6] gift 1949 to NGA. [1] The provenance was first published as “from the Cathedral of Calahara, Spain” in the 1915 sale catalog of the Emile Pares collection, and it is repeated with various modifications in the subsequent literature. Although the Spanish provenance has sometimes been doubted, NGA Systematic Catalogue author, the late Miklòs Boskovits, did not see any firm basis for such an allegation. He asked why should such an apparently unlikely provenance be fabricated for a painting considered to be, as was the Kahn _Madonna_, the work of an Italian artist, Cimabue or Cavallini. Boskovits considered speculations like those put forward by August Mayer (“Correspondence,” _ Art in America_ 12 [1924]: 234-235) and James Stubblebine (“Two Byzantine Madonnas form Calahorra Spain,” _ The Art Bulletin_ 48 [1966]: 379-381), linking the arrival of NGA 1949.7.1 and its companion-piece (NGA 1937.1.1) to Spain with the story of Anna Constance, widow of the emperor John III Ducas Vatatzes (who lived in Valencia since 1269 and died there in 1313), to be, for the time being, idle. There could be various other ways to explain the presence of the two paintings at Calahorra (see Otto Demus, “Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” _Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft_ 7 [1958]: 93-94); the provenance should, according to Boskovits, be considered valid until demonstrated otherwise. As Rolf Bagemihl wrote to David Alan Brown (letter of July 1992, in NGA curatorial files): “There has been a confusion and deprecation of the Calahorra provenance, but Parès[_sic_] was a serious collector and it might be profitable to have some research done on his collection, and right in Calahorra.” [2] In 1949 Edward B. Garrison (_Italian Romanesque Panel Painting_, Florence, 1949: 44, no. 23) included Madrid and Weissberger (Garrison spelled the name Weissburger) in his provenance of the painting, without including any dates. In 1982 Hans Belting (“The ‘Byzantine’ Madonnas: New Facts about their Italian Origins and Some Observations on Duccio,” _Studies in the History of Art_ 12 [1982]: 7, 21 n. 2) wrote that the painting had come on the art market in Madrid in 1912, and that it was Weissberger who claimed the painting had come from Calahorra. However, according to Belting, Robin Cormack found in Edward B. Garrison’s papers (at the Courtauld Institute, London) the information that Weissberger had fabricated the Calahorra provenance, information that Cormack referred to in a lecture given at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in 1979. [3] The purchaser at the Pares sale is recorded as G.W. Arnold in an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA Library, as well as in a report on the sale in _American Art News_ (27 February 1915): 7. Arnold is also given as the purchaser of other lots. However, there is a Pares invoice for the sale of the painting to Kleinberger later in the year (see note 4), so perhaps Arnold was buying for Pares, and the painting was actually bought in. Indeed, Osvald Sirén writes about the sale: “Somehow none of the New York collectors or dealers at that time seems to have grasped the artistic and historical importance of the work; the bidding was very slow, and the original purchaser retained his treasure. When I came to New York about a year later [early 1916] the picture was in the hands of a well known dealer…” (“A Picture by Pietro Cavallini,” _The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs_ 32, no. 179 [February 1918]: 45). [4] The Pares invoice for the sale to Kleinberger describes the painting as "Vierge[_sic_] sur pauneau garanté du 13th siecle. provenant de la Cathèdrale de Calahorra" (Kleinberger files in the Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 251, box 396, folder 5; copy in NGA curatorial files). [5] Kahn owned the painting by the time he lent it to an exhibition at Kleinberger Galleries that was on view in November 1917. It has not yet been determined when and from whom Kahn purchased the painting, although it was possibly from Kleinberger. [6] Although Duveen Brothers asked at least in 1941 what price Mrs. Kahn would accept for the painting, she specifically told them it was not for sale and that it was not to be shown to anyone (the dealer was storing the painting for her); Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 328, box 473, folder 2; copies in NGA curatorial files.
- Medium: tempera on poplar panel
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