Choose an Art Search

Madonna with grapes and standing Christ child

(1472 to 1553 Germany)

Colnaghi

Dr Julius Reiffel Sale, Helbing, Frankfurt, 1933; Frau Julius Drey, Munich; Dr Lohse; Collection Berlin (1967); Swiss Private Collection.

M. J. Friedlander and J. Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach, Berlin 1932, nr 189 e; M. J. Friedlander and J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, 1978, Nr 228 c.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Exhibition on the 400th anniversary of the artist, Kronach, 12 July – 29 August 1953, Cat. No.34 (addendum)

Certificates: Ernst Buchner, Munich 1952; Max J. Friedländer, Amsterdam 1952; Ludwig Meyer, Archiv für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, March 2006

This small and exquisite painting by Cranach the Elder is an important transitional work, which heralds the master’s late style. The use of the monogram of the serpent with the wings stretching upwards, reflects the fact that the painting was executed before Lucas Cranach took over his father’s studio in 1537, at which point the monogram was changed with the wings being shown stretched horizontally rather than upturned. Buchner observed in his expertise of 1952 that “this charming little Madonna with Grapes and standing Child is the earliest of all Madonna portrayals of this type in the oeuvre of Cranach the Elder”. The novelty was not so much the subject itself, which had long a genesis in Cranach’s career, as the way in which the subject was depicted, with the Christ Child standing in a heroic pose inspired by Italian High Renaissance protypes, rather than seated in his mother’s lap, and the background closed off, pushing the figures of the Virgin and Child to the front of the picture plane and investing the composition with a particular immediacy. This treatment of the subject was to provide the prototype for a number of pictures produced in the Cranach workshop in the late 1530s and 1540s all of which date from after 1537 (see Friedländer and Rosenberg 1978, Nos. 386-389).

The representation of the subject of the Madonna and Child with grapes, the grapes symbolising the Eucharist and Christ’s passion, was a subject which was to inspire the artist throughout his long career. It appears as early as 1513 in a woodcut (Geisberg, X11, 17), showing Cranach’s patron, Frederick the Wise, kneeling before the Virgin and Child, with the Christ Child seated in his mother’s lap, rather than standing, and in a well-defined interior space, whose composition harks back to the tradition of Van Eyck. Other early representations of the Madonna and Child with Grapes also show the Christ Child seated, rather than standing in his mother’s lap, but mother and child are presented in a wild naturalistic landscape setting with mountainous scenery and pine trees typical of the paintings of the Danube School. Among the earliest of these compositions are the so-called Madonna of the Pines of c.1510 (Friedlander and Rosenberg No. 29) whose present whereabouts are unknown and the Virgin and Child in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (Friedlander and Rosenberg, No. 30) dateable around 1509-15. In The Madonna of the Pines the Christ Child is placed on a cushion on top of a ledge in a manner which harks back to the Flemish fifteenth-century prototypes and the Eucharistic symbolism of the grapes is echoed in the tassels of the cushion. The Virgin in the Grape Arbour of c.1525 in the Pushkin Museum and the Virgin of the Grapes before a Hanging (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) show how in the mid 1520s the representation of the Christ Child in Cranach’s paintings was beginning to evolve in response to the influence of Italian painting with the Christ Child standing, rather than sitting in his mother’s lap. At this point, however, the relationship between the Child and his mother is still one of tender dependence with Christ’s arm around his mother’s neck in the Pushkin painting and both pictures retain the wild Danubian landscape background typical of Cranach’s early paintings.

The importance of the present picture in terms of Cranach’s stylistic evolution is that it shows him on the threshold of his late career turning away from the naturalistic northern tradition of these earlier paintings and adopting a broader style with more simplified forms in response to the lessons of the Italian High Renaissance. The love of detail, which is so typical of his earlier work, is still evident in the meticulous rendering of the Virgin’s hair, but the form of the standing Christ Child is more heroic, inspired perhaps by the example of Raphael, and the vivid use of ultramarine, is also typical of the strong colours found in his later works when the artist came increasingly under the influence of Venetian painting. The naturalistic landscape background has now disappeared, and the figures are placed very close to the front of the picture plane in a way which looks forward to Cranach’s later depictions of the Virgin and Child with Grapes such as the Virgin and Child with St John Asleep in a private collection, Dortmund (Freidlander and Rosenberg, No. 389) and there is a general movement towards the simplification of contours and forms and a use of plain backrounds, and classical forms, found later in such works as the so-called Maria Hilfbild (Stadtpfarrkirche, Innsbruck) dateable to 1537,which was presented by Prince Johann Georg of Saxony to the Archduke Leopold V. Writing about this picture in 2006, Ludwig Meyer observed that the picture “was judged so positively by Buchner and Friedlander that I can only join the great connoisseurs in their opinion. I am doing this explicitly and with conviction, because the small Madonna painting has all the qualities to be expected from the elder Cranach. It is precise and accurate in the rendering of the Madonna’s hair, soft and tender in the lovely face of the childlike mother”.