Virgin and Child. Durán Madonna is an oil on oak panel painting completed sometime between 1435 and 1438 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden.
The painting derives from Jan van Eyck's Ince Hall Madonna and was much imitated subsequently. Now in the Prado, Madrid, it depicts a seated and serene Virgin Mary dressed in a long, flowing red robe lined with gold-coloured thread.
She cradles the child Jesus who sits on her lap, playfully leafing backwards through a holy book or manuscript on which both figures' gazes rest. But unlike van Eyck's earlier treatment, van der Weyden not only positions his Virgin and Child in a Gothic apse or niche as he had his two earlier madonnas, but also places them on a projecting plinth, thus further emphasising their sculptural impression.
Christ appears much older than in most contemporary paintings of this kind. He is far from an infant, and is very realistically and physically rendered.
He is shown as a small child, with none of the softness of usual 15th-century depictions of the Virgin and Child. The painting is characterised by the sculptural look that van der Weyden often favoured, and for its similarity in colourisation to his c. 1435 Descent from the Cross and c. 1442-45 Miraflores Altarpiece. The painting was acquired by Pedro Fernández-Durán in 1899 at the Palacio de Boadilla, Madrid. He donated the work to the Museo del Prado in 1930. Mary i
The painting derives from Jan van Eyck's Ince Hall Madonna and was much imitated subsequently. Now in the Prado, Madrid, it depicts a seated and serene Virgin Mary dressed in a long, flowing red robe lined with gold-coloured thread.
She cradles the child Jesus who sits on her lap, playfully leafing backwards through a holy book or manuscript on which both figures' gazes rest. But unlike van Eyck's earlier treatment, van der Weyden not only positions his Virgin and Child in a Gothic apse or niche as he had his two earlier madonnas, but also places them on a projecting plinth, thus further emphasising their sculptural impression.
Christ appears much older than in most contemporary paintings of this kind. He is far from an infant, and is very realistically and physically rendered.
He is shown as a small child, with none of the softness of usual 15th-century depictions of the Virgin and Child. The painting is characterised by the sculptural look that van der Weyden often favoured, and for its similarity in colourisation to his c. 1435 Descent from the Cross and c. 1442-45 Miraflores Altarpiece. The painting was acquired by Pedro Fernández-Durán in 1899 at the Palacio de Boadilla, Madrid. He donated the work to the Museo del Prado in 1930. Mary i
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