The Marriage of the Virgin

The Marriage of the Virgin

The Marriage of the Virgin

Artist:Michelino da Besozzo (Michelino de Mulinari) (Italian, Lombardy, active 1388–1450)
Date:ca. 1430
Medium:Tempera and gold on wood
Dimensions:25 5/8 x 18 3/4 in. (65.1 x 47.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943

Among the most celebrated painters of his day, Michelino da Besozzo worked for the ruler of Milan as well as in Venice. This is one of only two panel paintings certainly by him. The surface is damaged. The packed composition is laid out much like his work in illuminated manuscripts, and the comical reactions of the rejected suitors reveal the humorous vein of his art that captivated contemporaries.

Catalogue Entry

Beneath a curiously distended double arch of the nave of a church illuminated with bottle glass windows, the Virgin demurely extends her hand, on which a bearded Joseph places a ring rendered in raised, gilded pastiglia—the same technique used for the collar of the officiating priest and for the haloes decorated with pseudo-Kufic lettering. According to the Golden Legend, all of the Virgin’s suitors had been obliged to deposit their staffs in the Temple; Joseph’s alone flowered and he thereby gained the privilege of marrying the Virgin. He holds his staff, on which—in unprecedented fashion—the dove of the Holy Spirit is perched. Michelino was celebrated for his depiction of animals and the dove is rendered in decisively more naturalistic terms than the figures. Younger, rejected suitors express their frustration and anger with intentionally comic gestures and actions, such as the one who bites his staff. We know from the writing of fifteenth-century humanists how much such details were appreciated. The space is inconsistent: while the figural group clearly stands behind the right hand pilaster supporting the arch, they are in front of its matching column. Moreover, above the smaller arch the roofline drops to reveal a rectangular area of gold. These conventions are similar to traditions of illuminated manuscripts, which is not surprising since it was as an illuminator that Michelino was above all famous; there are comparisons for the style of the MMA panel in a book of hours in the Morgan Library, New York (Ms. 944; see Eisler 1981). The MMA picture and another showing the Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine, Anthony Abbot, and John the Baptist (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena) are the only two extant panel paintings by Michelino, who enjoyed a reputation as the most famous painter of his day: he was extravagantly praised by the Milanese court humanist, Umberto Decembrio, and the Duke of Berry’s agent declared him to be "the most excellent painter among all the painters of the world". Michelino’s center of activity was in Milan, but he also worked in Venice, where he is documented in 1410 and 1414, and the Veneto, where, in Vicenza, he decorated with frescoes the tombs of Marco and Giovanni Thiene in the church of Santa Corona. Few works are documented and his chronology is therefore uncertain. Opinions about the date of the MMA panel vary, but most scholars date it to the 1430s; it is almost certainly later than the panel in Siena. Whether it was painted in Milan or in Venice or the Veneto cannot be established with certainty. The figure of the Virgin was copied into an album—a taccuino di viaggio (for which see, inter alias, Degenhart and Schmitt 1960 and Fossi Todorow 1966). Keith Christiansen (Gentile da Fabriano, Ithaca, N.Y., 1982, p. 148) believes the Bacri drawing comes from an album by a pupil of Pisanello.
The condition is seriously compromised by abrasion due to harsh cleanings in the past.
Keith Christiansen 2011

Provenance

[Luigi Grassi, Florence, ?in 1924]; ?[conte Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome]; Maitland F. Griggs, New York (by 1926–d. 1943)

Exhibition History

New York. Century Association. "Italian Primitive Paintings," February 15–March 12, 1930, no. 25 (lent by Maitland Fuller Griggs) [see Zeri and Gardner 1986].
Milan. Palazzo Reale. "Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza," April 1–June 30, 1958, no. 156.
Milan. Palazzo Reale. "Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza: Milano al centro dell'Europa," March 12–June 28, 2015, no. III.6.

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