Göteborgs gåtfulla madonna - Maria med Jesusbarnet och Johannes Döparen på Göteborgs konstmuseum. Ikonografi, tolkning och stilanalys

Abstract

This essay presents an examination of some aspects of an anonymous Italian fifteenth century painting, the Madonna in Adoration of the Christ Child with the Young John the Baptist, in the Gothenborg Art Museum. My first aim is to understand its symbolic and religious content, and the other is to make an attempt at an attribution, or at least put the work in a likely environment, temporally and geographically. To the first end I analyse the image using Panofsky’s three stage method, and then make an iterpretation using the ‘period eye’ concept of Baxandall, especially from a religious viewpoit. Secondly, I try to define the style of the work mainly by analysing selected parameters from a large number of fifteenth century Italian pictures found in the photo archive of the Federico Zeri Foundation website on the internet. I conclude that the motive is influenced by Fra Filippo Lippi’s Adotation in the Forest, and that it probably was painted in Florence between 1461 and 1490, although some details also suggest a connection with Siense art.