Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Madonna and Child

Artist/Maker Lorenzo di Credi (Italy, ca. 1456-1536)

Dateca. 1500

Mediumtempera on wood

DimensionsSight: 31 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (80 x 59.7 cm)
Framed: 42 3/8 x 34 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (107.6 x 87 x 10.8 cm)

ClassificationsVisual Works

Credit LineGift of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Terms

Object number61.019.000

On View

On view

Collections

Art of Europe

DescriptionLorenzo di Credi was one of many apprentices, including Leonardo da Vinci, who learned the art of painting and sculpture in the 1480s in the Florentine workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488). As part of their training, young artists were taught to copy and imitate their master’s compositions. The Madonna and Child is one of several works after a lost composition by Lorenzo di Credi that was derived from Verrocchio’s design of a seated, three-quarter length figure of the Virgin with the Christ Child in her lap, silhouetted against a panoramic landscape. Credi’s original painting or cartoon was closely related to his Madonna and Child (Musée de la Ville, Strasbourg; 218) of ca. 1490. Another version of Credi’s lost composition in the collection of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and attributed to his shop, is almost identical to the Lowe’s painting. The composition of the Madonna and Child was also employed by a third member of the artist’s workshop, tentatively identified as Antonio Sogliani (1492-1544), for a tondo of the Madonna and Child with Two Angels in the Capitoline Museum Rome.