The Senigallia Madonna

Painting (1470s)
by Piero della Francesca (1415-1492)

Museum of Fine Arts
Boston, MA
September 13, 2013 – January 6, 2014

The Senigallia Madonna, on loan to the MFA from Italy for several months, is a noted work for several reasons.

First, it is thought to be della Francesca’s last completed painting, and, therefore, in some ways, an expression of his most mature work.

Second, it was robbed from its home at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in the Ducal Palace of Urbino in the mid 1970s in one of the largest art heists in Italian history. Remarkably, due to the wit and diligence of the Carabinieri Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, set up in the late 1960s in Italy for the express purpose of dealing with such things, the painting was retrieved in Switzerland thirteen months later.

Apparently, della Francesca was a gifted mathematician as well as painter and it shows in his work. There is a kind of regularity and precision, a geometrical formality, to his constructions quite evident here.

The name Senigallia is taken from a port city near Urbino where, displayed in a church, the painting was first taken serious note of in the nineteenth century.

The central figure, a Madonna, holds the baby Jesus in her arms. Her eyes are downcast and somewhat stoic, and his are a bit austere as well, but there are two quite striking figures that stand astride. Particularly so is the haloed male angelic figure on the left who stares out of the painting right at us. The round jewel on his necklace glistens.

The Madonna’s simply modeled red dress stands below her demure gaze, while the blue tunic she wears over it seems to almost lift off the canvas, amazingly dimensional.

A bold vertical band of light represents a vivid patch of sun on the left wall. The Madonna’s delicately enfolded veil shows hints of that distant light, while the subtly toned grey of her tunic lining rises and recedes in soft, multi-toned shadows.

Accentuated, right next to that patch of vivid light, the male figure staring directly at us well reminds us we are there.

The exhibit nicely points out the two della Francesca’s resident in Massachusetts: a Hercules at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and, Virgin and Child With Four Angels at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA, likely painted just before the Senigallia Madonna and exhibiting some very similar compositional elements.

There is also a film about the The Carabinieri Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage shown in the gallery, but available to watch online as well.

– BADMan