The Madonna of the Stars, c. 1575/1585

The Gallery’s Madonna of the Stars is one of a small group of loosely related paintings of the Madonna and Child, of varying degrees of quality, that have been linked to Jacopo Tintoretto. Although the entire group was attributed to Tintoretto himself by Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi (who acknowledged the possibility of studio participation only in the Gallery painting), it is evident that several different hands were involved in the production of these pictures. Some were undoubtedly painted in Tintoretto’s studio, while others may be by followers outside the shop.[1]  [1]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: nos. 93, 94, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, and 311; 2: figs. 119, 120, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, and 406; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), nos. S31, S32, S33, S34, and S35 (“Tintoretto Studio”) and C40, C41, and C93 (“Circle of Tintoretto”).

Of the group, the Gallery’s picture is the only one with a plausible claim to be at least in part by Jacopo Tintoretto, although opinions on this point have varied over the years.[2]  [2]
The attribution to Jacopo Tintoretto of Madonna of the Stars has been accepted by Georg Gronau (1921, dating it to c. 1565), Detlev von Hadeln (1922 and 1924, dating it c. 1560/1565), Wilhelm R. Valentiner (who saw in it a tender reflection of Tintoretto’s own domestic bliss), Erich von der Bercken and August L. Meyer (1923), Bernard Berenson (1932 and 1957), and Lionello Venturi; the latter two considered it a late work. Adolfo Venturi, seeing feminine grace rather than Tintoretto’s characteristic energy in the pictorial technique, ascribed it to Jacopo’s daughter Marietta, along with several related versions of the theme, while Rodolfo Pallucchini originally assigned it to Jacopo’s son Domenico. Luigi Coletti (1940) and von der Bercken (1942) attributed it to Jacopo with assistance. All these scholars based their judgments on the picture’s pre-restoration state, before the removal of overpainting that had softened the texture and hidden the cherubim and stars. More recently, Pierluigi De Vecchi (1970) and Pallucchini and Paola Rossi (1982) judged it to be a work by Jacopo with collaboration, dating from the early 1570s; Fern Rusk Shapley (1979) and Federico Zeri attributed it to Domenico; and Echols and Ilchman (2009) listed it as a studio production, possibly by Domenico, of the 1580s. Georg Gronau, The Bachstitz Gallery Collection, vol. 3, Objects of Art and Paintings (Berlin, 1921), pl. 92; Detlev von Hadeln, Zeichnungen des Giacomo Tintoretto (Berlin, 1922), 95; and Detlev von Hadeln, “Two Works in the Detroit Museum,” Art in America 12 (1924): 32–37, repro.; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “The Ralph H. Booth Loan Collection,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 4 (1923): 54; Erich von der Bercken and August L. Mayer, Jacopo Tintoretto (Munich, 1923), 1:226; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1932), 558; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School (London, 1957), 1:183; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 406; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. 9, pt. 4, La pittura del Cinqucento (Milan, 1929), 684; Luigi Coletti, Il Tintoretto (Bergamo, 1940), 31; Erich von der Bercken, Die Gemälde des Jacopo Tintoretto (Munich, 1942), 108; Pierluigi De Vecchi, L’opera completa del Tintoretto (Milan, 1970), 113; Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1:195; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:461–462; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), 142, no. S31. Zeri’s attribution to Domenico, rendered orally to NGA curator David Alan Brown, is recorded in NGA curatorial files (memorandum of October 17, 1975). Pallucchini’s attribution to Domenico was made in a manuscript opinion of October 15, 1940, a copy of which is in NGA curatorial files. The facial type of the Virgin, with its prominent nose, is one that appears regularly in Tintoretto’s paintings, although not usually in depictions of the Virgin; for example, it appears in the angel of the Annunciation in the organ shutters in the church of San Rocco, not firmly dated but probably from the late 1570s [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Jacopo Tintoretto, The Annunciation, late 1570s, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, Venice, and in a female onlooker to the right in the Adoration of the Magi at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, datable to 1581–1582 [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Jacopo Tintoretto, The Adoration of the Magi, 1581–1582, oil on canvas, Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, Venice. © Cameraphoto Arte snc.[3]  [3]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: nos. 434 and 436; 2: figs. 552 and 554; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), nos. 212 and 263. The faces of the Virgin in the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi are modeled similarly to their counterpart in the Gallery picture; their features, however, are more delicate. As noted by Adolfo Venturi, the Virgin in the Madonna of the Stars also resembles the women in the background in Saint Agnes Cures Licinius (datable before 1582, probably mid- to late 1570s).[4]  [4]
Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. 9, pt. 4, La pittura del Cinqucento (Milan, 1929), 684. On Saint Agnes Cures Licinius, see Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: no. 371; 2: fig. 479; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), no. 198. All of these date from the period in which Tintoretto employed many workshop assistants, including his son Domenico and his daughter Marietta; although the paintings cited as comparisons were undoubtedly designed by Jacopo and produced under his supervision and with his participation, other hands were almost certainly involved in all three.

Although the overall composition is conventional and the bodies of the Virgin and Christ Child are awkward and anatomically distorted, the face of the Virgin is confidently rendered and convincingly three-dimensional. In contrast, the hands, an important compositional element, are crude and inexpressive. While it is highly unlikely that Jacopo himself was responsible for the painting as a whole, it is possible that he participated in its execution to some extent, either leaving the peripheral areas to an assistant, or perhaps correcting and completing the assistant’s work after the latter had worked up the figures. Alternatively, the entire painting may have been executed by a member of the studio skilled at mimicking Tintoretto’s types and technique.[5]  [5]
X-radiographs of the painting show that the figures were initially rendered in a broad, sketchy technique, generally similar to that which appears in the Virgin and Child in the Gallery’s Doge Alvise Mocenigo and Family before the Madonna and Child, 1961.9.44, of c. 1575. The Virgin could have been copied from an angel or similar figure by Jacopo in another painting. Domenico Tintoretto remains a possible author, although the picture shows no definitive characteristics linking it to his established works.

The cherubim and stars in the background were uncovered when the painting was acquired by the National Gallery of Art. The present title was adopted in 1948.[6]  [6]
Title change memorandum dated February 2, 1948, in NGA curatorial files. The original title was Madonna and Child. Similar cherubim appear at the top of Tintoretto’s Baptism of Christ in the church of San Silvestro, Venice (datable before 1582, probably circa 1580).[7]  [7]
See Frederick Ilchman et al., Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (Boston, 2009), 246–251, cat. no. 53, repro. (The cherubim were revealed in a restoration in 2003–2004 and do not appear in earlier reproductions.) Cherubim also appear in a Madonna and Child attributed to Tintoretto in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples; however, the cherubim and principal figures appear to be by a different hand from the Gallery painting. See Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. 311; 2: fig. 404; cataloged by Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), no. C93 as “Circle of Tintoretto.” The Madonna of the Misericordia (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; attributed there to Studio of Tintoretto), with a similar glory and cherubim, cited by Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:462, as a comparison, also appears to be by another hand; see Sandra Moschini Marconi, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, vol. 2, Opere d’arte del secolo XVI (Venice, 1962), 250, fig. 433. Since the canvas may have been cut down, it is not possible to determine whether the original composition was significantly different. The existence of several other very similar paintings suggests that it might have been only slightly larger, standing in the long Venetian tradition of half-length Madonnas.[8]  [8]
As argued by Detlev von Hadeln, Zeichnungen des Giacomo Tintoretto (Berlin, 1922), 95. In contrast, Erich von der Bercken and August L. Mayer, Jacopo Tintoretto (Munich, 1923), 226, thought that the canvas had been cut down from a full-length figure. Melania G. Mazzucco, Jacomo Tintoretto e i suoi figli: Storia di una famiglia veneziana (Milan, 2009), 261, speculated without any real foundation that the painting might have been cut down from an altarpiece for the church of La Maddalena in Venice, mentioned by Marco Boschini as a product of the “casa del Tintoretto.” However, the presence of the heavenly light and cherubim raises the possibility that the Virgin was originally seated on a crescent moon, as seen in several other versions by Tintoretto and his followers. The motif is associated with the Woman of the Apocalypse (Revelations 12:1), “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head twelve stars.”[9]  [9]
For example, the Virgin and Child with Saint Mark and Saint Luke (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) and Madonna and Child (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence); see Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. nos. 310, 312; 2: figs. 406, 407; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), no. 156, S33.

The links to paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto from the mid-1570s and early 1580s suggest a date of circa 1575/1585.

Robert Echols

March 21, 2019