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Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse (Flemish, 1478-1532)
Madonna and Child, c. 1525-1530
Oil on panel, 18-3/4 x 14-1/2 inches
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Among the most lovely and least-known of Jan Gossaert's meditative Marian images is The Chrysler Museum's Madonna and Child of ca. 1525-30, a tiny gem of a picture that exemplifies the synthesis of Italian and Northern styles that Gossaert achieved in his final works. The Virgin's broadly idealized face and form and the Child's heroic frame are resoundingly Southern in treatment, registering especially the influence of Leonardo da Vinci (and the Italianate Madonna paintings of Albrecht Durer). Yet the Virgin's golden ringlets and pearly polished flesh--the infant's fleecy curls, transparent gown and minutely pleated sash--reveal Gossaert's peculiarly Netherlandish taste for ornamental embellishment and exquisitely crafted detail. In their hands the Madonna and Child hold a golden yellow fruit--perhaps a pear, a traditional emblem of the Incarnate Christ that refers to his love for mankind. Particularly noteworthy is the Madonna's spectacular double topknot of hair, a complex symbol of her perpetual virginity. The Madonna and Child originally functioned as the center panel of a small Gossaert triptych. Its shutters, preserved today in Brussels in the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, contain portraits of the unknown male and female donors -- presumably husband and wife -- who commissioned the work. The triptych was dismantled before 1859, when the Madonna and Child was sold separately in London from the Cheltenham collection of John Rushout, second Baron Northwick (1769-1859). The dating of 1525-30 is based on the painting's strong stylistic kinship with several other late Madonna pictures by Gossaert (Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

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