Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Bartholomew and John (Sacra Conversazione)

Author: Surya Stemerding

The Virgin sits on a rather dilapidated throne with the Christ Child standing on her knee. The child passes an apple to St Bartholomew, who stands beside him. He is identified by the knife with which he was skinned alive. The apple alludes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and to the Fall of Man. The presence of the fruit in Christ’s hand identifies him as the future Redeemer who will save mankind from original sin. To the Virgin’s right stands St John the Evangelist, identified by the eagle diagonally behind him. The image of the enthroned Virgin with the Christ Child is known as a sacra conversazione (holy conversation). The representation of vegetation in this drawing is strikingly detailed – there are plants at the feet of the two saints and growing on the throne near Mary’s head, where two angels hold a crown aloft.

The anonymous artist must be sought in the circle of Bernardino Lanino. His drawing style is notable for its strong chiaroscuro, a combination of heavily accentuated shadow passages and white highlights on coloured or prepared paper, and was influenced by the work of his Milanese teacher Gaudenzio Ferrari (1477/1478-1546).^[1] One example of this unusual technique is a drawing in New York dated around 1540-50: a standing Virgin with the Christ Child amidst a large group of kneeling monks.^[2] The chiaroscuro technique was widely followed, particularly by artists from Vercelli in Piedmont, the town where Lanino died.^[3] However, the physiognomy in the Rotterdam drawing is less refined than that in Lanino’s drawings and the outlines are sharper.

When the old backing was removed in 1996, there proved to be a drawing on that too. It is a figure study in black chalk which is not, however, by the same hand and probably dates from the eighteenth century.^[4]