The Virgin and Child thumbnail 1
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Portrait Miniatures, Room 90a, The International Music and Art Foundation Gallery

The Virgin and Child

Miniature
ca. 1550 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The Virgin and Child, surrounded by music-making putti, in the garden of a mansion. The frame is softwood, painted and water gilded on a thin layer of gesso, with Italian style painted decoration. The component parts appear to have been taken from a large frame. The moulding for an Italian frame with this type of decoration would most likely be a cassetta style.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleThe Virgin and Child (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Watercolour on vellum, laid onto panel and varnished
Brief description
Miniature painting by Simon Bening (Benninck), watercolour on vellum, depicting the Virgin and Child. Flemish School, ca. 1550.
Physical description
The Virgin and Child, surrounded by music-making putti, in the garden of a mansion. The frame is softwood, painted and water gilded on a thin layer of gesso, with Italian style painted decoration. The component parts appear to have been taken from a large frame. The moulding for an Italian frame with this type of decoration would most likely be a cassetta style.
Dimensions
  • Vellum sheet height: 31.5cm
  • Vellum sheet width: 22.1cm
  • Panel height: 32.1cm
  • Panel width: 22.5cm
  • Panel depth: 4mm
  • Frame height: 320mm
  • Frame width: 225mm
Marks and inscriptions
Hove Museum/Loan exhibition 19 [Printed] 53-4/ Flemish Master. The Virgin with the Infant Christ [Handwritten]/ Lent by [Printed] Sir Harold Wernher [Handwritten] (Museum labels; On the back; Ink; 1953)
Credit line
Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1998
Object history
The following excerpt is taken from 'Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe', Part 5, 'New Directions in Manuscript Painting, circa 1510-1561', by Kren, Thomas, published by The Royal Academy of Arts.

"This Virgin and Child is one of Bening's largest paintings on parchment (ill. 158), and it was likely intended as an independent work. The composition shows the Virgin and Child in the immediate foreground seated on an elevated terrain and accompanied by enthusiastic music-making putti. Beyond the Virgin extends a landscape that features in the middle distance a palace and its grounds, including a fountain, a fenced garden, and various outbuildings. While a peasant fells a tree at left, putti appear by the fountain and angels near the palace, giving the terrestrial setting a celestial air. A forested landscape beyond leads the eye over rugged terrain to the horizon. the landscape has the jagged, rocky outcroppings that are characteristic of the work of Joachim Patinir and Herri met de Bles but less common in Bening's own miniatures. The features of the middle ground are note-worthy, especially the majestic palace and its subordinate structures, the depiction of which has the character of a portrait of an estate. Perhaps the painting was commissioned by the lord of the estate that is represented here.
The work is also striking for the artist's extensive quotations from Jan Gossaert's Malvagna Triptych (Palermo, Galleria Nazionale), including the groups of musical angels beside the Virgin and the fountain behind her to the left. Bening draws upon Gossaert's art repeatedly during the 1530s and quoted the Malvagna Triptych elsewhere (cat. no. 150). It was the beginning of the 1530s that the great Spanish patron Mencia de Mendoza employed Gossaert as her court artist, at a time when she and her spouse, Henry III of Nassau, the chamberlain of Charles V, also engaged Bening's services (cat. no. 149). Yet in the handling of space, with the elevated foreground and elaborately constructed recession, the work recalls most closely Bening's late cycle of London calender miniatures (cat. no. 159). Therefore the painting, difficult to date very precisely, might be as late as the end of the 1540s."
Subjects depicted
Collection
Accession number
E.635-1998

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Record createdMarch 9, 1999
Record URL
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