Enthroned Madonna with Child

(With the client's family crest in the upper part of the composition)

Oil on table

101 x 62 cm.

In frame 114 x 76 cm.

The beautiful work proposed expresses the typical iconographic characteristics of the painter called 'Master of the Parrot', a conventional name used by critics to define an anonymous Dutch author of the sixteenth century.

More precisely, it is a painter from the southern Netherlands, active in Antwerp around 1530-50, so defined for the unmistakable parrot that often appears in his works by him. In religious iconography, the parrot was often used as a Marian symbol, as it was widely believed that its most common verse was "Ave", that is, the greeting of the archangel Gabriel to Mary at the time of the Annunciation.

Today the idea is widespread according to which the name 'Master of the parrot' does not refer to a single painter, but rather a group who, based on the stylistic characteristics, carried out their training in the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Aalst 1502 - Brussels 1550), creating devotional paintings intended for a bourgeois client and concentrating their activity on a specific topic particularly requested by the contemporary market.

As an example we can mention the
Virgin and Child from the San Diego Museum of Art, where the figures, like ours, are in line with the mannerist taste for elegant body proportions that surpass reality, with elements such as tapered fingers, wide face and thin nose. These characters also betray the influence of artists active in the region such as Joos van Cleve, Ambrosius Benson and Jan Gossaert, from whose works he must necessarily have taken inspiration.

As we can well notice from our painting, executed by a talented follower commissioned by the family whose noble coat of arms is affixed to the upper part, the works of these artists were characterized by the unmistakable reception of Italian Renaissance painting, particularly visible in the way in which the child is in the womb of the mother and still in the compositional choice of inserting a landscape view visible through a window. Even the nuanced technique, of Leonardo's memory, attests to the lasting Italian influence in these works.

The state of conservation of the table is good, perfectly restored; There is a slight crack, visible in the lower part of the canvas in conjunction with the edge of the table, stabilized, and which affects the reading of the work in a minimal way.

It features an old professionally executed parquet.

The painting is completed by a pleasant gilded frame.