Jacopo Bassano’s Madonna surrounds her Son and the infant Saint John the Baptist with gentle care, her protective hands holding both children. A veil covers the Christ Child’s head as well as her own; green drapery curves around her, merging into her blue cloak. These dark hues contrast with central areas of pale flesh tones and white and pink cloth, while the purple-red of Saint John’s tunic leads to the reddish brown of his curls, into Mary’s gown and then up to her coppery hair and the baby hair of Jesus. Each bending limb repeats the arcs of internal movement within the secure world created by this enclosed painted space.

Christ blesses Saint John with his left hand. The saint’s biblical role is to prefigure the coming of the Messiah, and later he will recognise Jesus by baptising him. John offers the Child a cross, a sign of future betrayal and death. His gown is made of animal skins which he would also wear in adulthood. Unlike other depictions of the theme, Bassano omits the common symbol of an innocent lamb, although in an almost identical version, created by him at the same time, a white lamb pokes its head and neck into the lower left of the canvas.[1] 

Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist became the prototype on which the artist based many similar compositions for the rest of his long life. The female model reappears throughout his oeuvre for more than fifty years. After the static portrayals of the Gothic period, artists in the Renaissance attempted more naturalistic views of their human subjects. From Bellini to Titian, painters from the Veneto increasingly looked at how ordinary women behaved with their babies, using these observations as a model for images of the Holy Mother and Child.[2] Like any baby, Jesus firmly grasps his Mother’s finger. Bassano combines a majestic close-up figure of Mary in three-quarter length with an intense internal relationship between all three protagonists. She looks at Saint John, who exchanges a concentrated gaze with Christ. We are only onlookers, yet become engaged witnesses of an intimate association.

By the middle decades of the sixteenth century, oil paint was used in ways that fully exploited its fluidity and expressive power. Bassano’s impasto strokes animate the veil around the Madonna’s neck and head, then highlight the edges of her white cuff. John’s corkscrew ringlets are similarly accented in red-gold. As well as employing a rich Venetian palette, Bassano shows the influence of the Mannerist artist Parmigianino,[3] especially in the elongated elegance of the Virgin’s face and long-fingered hands. Also noticeable is her delicate porcelain complexion. Another Mannerist characteristic is the way in which Bassano fills up the picture space with draped volumes, forcing the composition close to the viewer and leaving no room for any architectural setting nor landscape background. The painter’s skill lies not just in technical mastery, but in his ability to communicate the tenderness of the scene.

Christine Dixon

[1] Uffizi Gallery, Florence, held Pitti Palace.

[2] See cat. 34, Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child c.1475–1476; cat. 35 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child (Alzano Madonna) c.1488;
and cat. 43, Titian,Madonna and Child in a landscape c.1507.

[3] Parmigianino (1503–1540).