Canvas

anonymous Madonna and Child 1600-1650 Copy from Murillo (1611-1682),

original in The Norton Simon Museum, Los Angeles.

This seventeenth century portrait of Mary and Jesus is something of an odd-man-out in the Castle Bergh collection, which consists mainly of medieval and early renaissance art. Mr. van Heek, the last owner of Castle Bergh, must have bought it for its sweet quality, as it was a wedding gift to his wife. Mary doesn’t look sad or frightened, as she does on a lot of the medieval and early renaissance panels which depict her with her son. There is nothing that hints at the holiness of the two persons - no haloes surround their heads. The extraordinarily large eyes of both add to the human tenderness of the scene. The sunlight coming from the left highlights the Virgin’s face, leaving almost everything else in the shade. The artist was clearly influenced by what is termed the ’chiaroscuro’ (’light-dark’) technique which became popular in Italian art in the seventeenth century. Rembrandt, the seventeenth century Dutch painter, was also famous for his use of chiaroscuro.