A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1295. MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

Girolamo Giovenone (Lombard: early 16th Century).

Giovenone was a native of Vercelli, in which city several fine pictures by him are preserved. Other painters who worked, or were born, at Vercelli are Macrino d' Alba (1200), Lanini (700), and Gaudenzio Ferrari (1465). By some critics our picture is assigned to another painter of the same school, Defendente Ferrari (see Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's Exhibition, 1898, p. lxxix.). Examples of both painters may be seen in the Turin Gallery.

The Virgin and Child are flanked by the kneeling figures of two men, perhaps brothers, who were doubtless the donors of the picture. Behind each of them stands his patron saint, patting the devotee approvingly on the back. The Virgin's face is charming; so also are two little angels, who are quaintly perched up aloft, one on either side sitting on ledges of the canopied throne. The picture is a good example of symmetry—almost exaggerated, one may think—in composition.