17th-century Bolognese School, Madonna And Child

17th-century Bolognese school

Madonna and Child

Terracotta, 31 x 36 cm

A devotional relief in polychrome terracotta set within an elaborate carved and gilded frame, decorated with spiraling foliage volutes that frame the sacred scene with a plastic vigor typical of the Baroque style. The Virgin is depicted in a half-length portrait in a gesture of intimate maternal affection rendered with expressive naturalness. The blue mantle enveloping her head and shoulders contrasts chromatically with the red robe, which is wide and draped with a skillful interplay of folds that lend movement and depth to the figure. The Child, lively in his pose, reaches out toward his mother in a gesture of trust that animates the composition, while the sienna-colored background enhances, by contrast, the polychromy of the garments.

The work is part of the rich 17th-century Bolognese sculptural tradition, a city that in that century saw a flourishing production of devotional terracotta works of the highest quality—heirs to the great era of Properzia de’ Rossi and, above all, Alfonso Lombardi in the preceding century, and renewed by the influence of the Carracci and contemporary Emilian painting. Bologna, a crossroads between Emilian and Roman culture, developed a school of sculptors capable of combining the painterly softness derived from Carracci-style naturalism with an intense and direct religious sentiment, intended for private and domestic devotion. Terracotta Madonnas with the Child, often set within carved wooden frames such as the one shown here, were widespread objects of worship in bourgeois and aristocratic circles, bearing witness to a post-Tridentine piety that favored images with a strong emotional impact and immediate emotional resonance.