FOLLOWER OF ANDREA DEL SARTO | MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

This charming devotional image is an early period copy of a lost composition by Andrea del Sarto. Motifs have also been derived from other extant autograph works by Andrea. The arrangement of the three figures is loosely based on Andrea's Madonna della Scala (1522, Museo del Prado, Madrid), in which the Madonna holds the infant Jesus standing on her lap, and he reaches out in the same way toward a kneeling angel.¹ A later version in the North Carolina Museum of Art, likely painted with studio assistance, is closer to our painting in that it features the same three figures in a spare interior, though the Madonna lifts her veil with her right hand as she does in the Prado picture.² The North Carolina painting has a more horizontal composition and a window in the background, and Jesus and St. John both hold onto St. John's cross. In the present painting, the Madonna holds onto her son with both hands, and looks down at a sharper angle toward St. John, given the vertical composition. Here, St. John hands Jesus a shell, prefiguring the baptism he would perform on his cousin later in life, which is often depicted with St. John the Baptist using a shell to pour water over Christ's head.

1. Andrea del Sarto, Madonna della Scala, 1522, oil on panel, 177 by 135 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. See A. Natali, Andrea del Sarto, Milan 1999, p. 142.

2. Andrea del Sarto and assistants, Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, c. 1528, oil on panel, 58.4 by 62.2 cm. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 52.9.167. See A. Natali, op. cit., p. 144.