The Virgin and Child
Alesso Baldovinetti (1425-1499) · c. 1464
The Virgin kneels with her hands joined in prayer over the Child, who lies across her lap, and behind them a vast landscape opens out, a valley with a winding river, fields and distant hills under a pale sky. The horizon is low and the Virgin's head rises above it, so that she seems to preside over the whole countryside. Her face is grave and still, the modelling clear and cool, and the landscape is painted with an attention to distance and atmosphere that was new in Florence.
Alesso Baldovinetti was a Florentine painter of the generation of Piero della Francesca, and his taste for luminous landscapes and precise, quiet forms is close enough to Piero that the Louvre listed this picture as his when it was acquired in eighteen ninety eight. The museum dates the panel to about fourteen sixty four. It belonged to Count Duchâtel in Paris before eighteen sixty two and passed through his family and the dealer Haro before the museum bought it with the help of the Société des Amis du Louvre. Look at the river valley: it has been compared with the Arno as seen from the hills above Florence.
Did You Know? When the Louvre bought the picture in eighteen ninety eight it believed it was acquiring a Piero della Francesca.
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