Madonna and Child Haller Madonna

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Madonna and Child Haller Madonna: Albrecht Durer

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Albrecht Durer Oil Painting - Madonna and Child Haller Madonna

Keywords: Madonna, Child, Haller, Madonna

Work Overview: Madonna and Child (Haller Madonna)
Artist Albrecht Dürer
Year before 1505
Medium Oil on panel
Dimensions 50 cm × 40 cm (20 in × 16 in)
Location National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Haller Madonna is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to around 1498. It is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The coat of arms in the left lower corner allowed to identify the commission of the work from the old house of Haller von Hallerstein in Nuremberg. The other coat of arms in the right corner has not been identified. In the mid-20th century the work was acquired was Samuel Kress, which later donated it to the American museum of Washington.

The scheme of the painting, with the child standing on a cushion on the background with a red background and window opening to a landscape, is similar to that Giovanni Bellini's works, which Dürer had seen in his first sojourn in Venice (1494-1495). When the painting was sold on the antiques market, it was attributed to Bellini; it was later assigned to the German painter due to the style of the landscape and the posture of the child, typical of northern European painting. The child holds a fruit, a symbol of the Original Sin; the red padding of the cushion, as well as the tassels, perhaps symbolize the blood of the Jesus' Passion.

The reverse of the painting is also painted, showing a Biblical scene of Lot's flight from Sodom, with a landscape including a firing town in the background. Since the two scenes are unrelated, it has been supposed that the panel was originally part of a diptych showing also the donor, with Lot and his children in the left panel.

Commissioned by the Haller von Hallerstein family, it is a Venetian type Madonna, seemingly an homage to Giovanni Bellini. There is another painting on the back of the panel.

This Madonna and Child, which manifestly follows the Venetian precedent of the close-up, half-figure portrait, was once thought to be by Bellini. To Dürer, Bellini was an example of a painter who could make the ideal become actual. But Dürer can never quite believe in the ideal, passionately though he longs for it. His Madonna has a portly, Nordic handsomeness, and the Child a snub nose and massive jowls. All the same, He holds His apple in exactly the same position as in Dürer's great engraving of Adam and Eve, and this attitude is pregnant with significance. The Child seems to sigh, hiding behind His back the stolen fruit that brought humanity to disaster and that He is born to redeem. On one side is the richly marbled wall of the family home; on the other, the wooded and castellated world. The sad little Christ faces a choice, ease or the laborious ascent, and His remote Mother seems to give Him little help.

Beautiful though the work is in color, and fascinating in form, it is this personal emotion that always makes Dürer an artist who touches our heart, somehow putting out feelers of moral sensibility.

Dürer was born in Nuremberg and received a typical medieval training from his goldsmith father and from the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut. Yet he was one of the major transmitters of the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to artists in the North. This was the result of direct experience acquired on two trips to Italy, as well as of his own diligent study of ideal figural proportions and perspective.

Dürer traveled to Venice in 1494/1495 and 1505/1507. While there, he became well acquainted with Giovanni Bellini, whose influence is evident in the Madonna and Child. The athletic Christ Child, the stable pyramid of the Virgin's form, the strong, and almost sculptural modeling of the figures, and the contrast of clear blue and red setting off Mary's shape all recall Bellini's treatment of the same subject.

On the other hand, Mary's placement in the corner of a room with a window open on a distant view indicates Dürer's familiarity with Netherlandish devotional images. The minute treatment of the Alpine landscape and the careful delineation of all textures and surfaces equally remind one of Dürer's persistent fascination with the North's tradition of visual exactitude.

The Madonna and Child probably was intended for private devotion. The diminutive coat–of–arms in the lower corners have been identified as those of the Hallery family (left) and Koberger (right), both prominent in Nuremberg. Further, it has been suggested that the painting was commissioned by Wolf III Haller who married Ursula Koberger in 1491.

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Albrecht Durer

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