The ''Bagnacavallo Madonna'' is an

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...

, dating to before 1505. It is now in the Magnani-Rocca Foundation of

Traversetolo Traversetolo (Parmigiano: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Parma in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about west of Bologna and about south of Parma. Traversetolo borders the following municipalities: Canossa, Lesig ...

, in the

province of Parma The Province of Parma ( it, Provincia di Parma) is a province in the Emilia–Romagna region of Italy. Its largest town and capital is the city of Parma. It is made up of 47 ''comuni''. It has an area of and a total population of around 450,000 ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

History

The work, also called ''Madonna del Patrocinio'', was discovered after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

in the Capuchin female convent of Bagnacavallo, in the province of Ravenna. In 1961 the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi recognized it as by Dürer, and, a few years later, the work was acquired by the collection currently owning it. It could be one of the works carried by Dürer with him from Germany in his second trip to Italy in 1505, which he used to fund his expenses. A 1495 preparatory drawing is known, copied from a ''Child Jesus'' by

Lorenzo di Credi Lorenzo di Credi (1456/59 – January 12, 1537) was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor best known for his paintings of religious subjects. He is most famous for having worked in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio at the same time a ...

(perhaps seen by the German artist in Venice). Mary's features resemble those of

Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini (; c. 1430 – 26 November 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, formerly thought to have been his father ...

's works, which were also present in Dürer's work from the same period, such as the ''

Haller Madonna The ''Haller Madonna'' is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to between 1496 and 1499. It is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The reverse also contains a full Dürer painting, entitled ''Lot and His Daughters''. Descri ...

''.

Description

The scene is set in a dark room with, on the left, a window shut with wooden planks and, on the right, an arch leading to a walled enclosure (symbolizing the ''

hortus conclusus ''Hortus conclusus'' is a Latin term, meaning literally "enclosed garden". At their root, both of the words in ''hortus conclusus'' refer linguistically to enclosure. It describes a genre of garden that was enclosed as a practical concern, a majo ...

''). Mary is seen half-figure with the Child in her lap. The latter's left hand is touching his mother's, while the other holds a sprig of fruit-bearing strawberry plant, one of the symbolic plants of the Triune. The plant the Child holds has only two leaves in the strawberry three-leaf configuration. The missing leaf on the plant indicates the last person of the Trinity in the Child.

Sources

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{{authority control Paintings by Albrecht Dürer 1500s paintings Paintings of the Madonna and Child Paintings in the collection of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation