Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist

Santi di Tito left his hometown of Sansepolcro around 1550 to study in Florence, eventually making his way into the shop of Agnolo Bronzino. After a period of work in Rome he returned to Florence where he became one of the outstanding artists of the second half of the sixteenth century, contributing to decoration of the private study (studiolo) of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio in the 1570s. In his devotional paintings, above all many important commissions for altarpieces, he broke away from the artificial style of many of his contemporaries, returning to an intense study of earlier Florentine artists, such as Andrea del Sarto, and introducing a decided shift toward a more naturalistic approach. This pictorial reform was closely allied with the renewed emphasis on the affective power of painting and places him among such outstanding innovators as Federico Barocci.

Vasari said that Santi produced many paintings of the Madonna and Child, but few have come down to us; of them this is one of the most carefully composed. John the Baptist offers the lamb of sacrifice to Christ who grasps one of its legs while the Madonna, seated on the ground, steadies him; the three figures are arranged in a tightly interlocked group with studied gestures, reminiscent of Andrea del Sarto, and are set before a landscape with a centralized church or temple in the background (Nadia Bastogi notes that it reappears in an altarpiece by Santi of 1582). The unusual palette, with its color harmonies of purple, orange, and pale green, is characteristic of the artist, as is the subtle fall of light to suggest volume and mass. Like most of the works done in the 1570s the panel is notable for the painterly quality of the brushwork, lending a fresh quality to the curls of the children’s hair, for example, and for the great sensitivity with which the Virgin’s head is modeled, as well as the tender way in which she supports the Christ Child’s arm. Two later versions of the painting (private collection: see Bastogi 2014; and Museo di Casa Martelli, Florence) are slightly larger and include a figure of Saint Joseph in the background as well as a column to replace the round temple found here, signaling a change in the iconography. These versions share the harder, less painterly style of Santi’s work and must postdate The Met's picture. They point toward a style more in tune with Counter Reformation devotion.

Many drawings show Santi working with this subject. One of the sheets closest to this composition includes three quick pen and ink sketches of a seated Madonna, two of them with the figures of the Christ Child and the Baptist, as well as a more developed study of the Holy Family (Worcester Art Museum, 2011.311). In these sketches the artist considers the positions of the figures in a way directly parallel to the emphasis on the pyramidal structure of the painting.

The provenance of the painting cannot yet be pushed back before 1928 when it was owned by the British collector Walter J. Abraham, Esq., and was attributed to Jacopo Pontormo.

Andrea Bayer 2014

Walter J. Abraham, London (in 1928); Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, N.J. (until 1981; sale, Sotheby's, New York, June 11, 1981, no. 87, to Fisher); M. Roy Fisher, New York (1981–d. 1992; on loan to The Met from 1982); his brother, Jules Fisher, New York (until 2012; on loan to The Met)

London. Grafton Galleries. "Art Treasures," April 30–May 26, 1928, no. 1419 (as by Pontormo, lent by Walter J. Abraham).

Simona Lecchini Giovannoni. "Studi e disegni preparatori di Santi di Tito." Paragone 35 (September 1984), pp. 24, 33 n. 20, pl. 25a, includes it with a group of Holy Family compositions that she dates to the 1580s and 1590s; mentions the version with Piero Corsini as a replica.

Barbara Wollesen-Wisch. Italian Renaissance Art: Selections from the Piero Corsini Gallery. Exh. cat., Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University. [University Park, Pa.], 1986, pp. 56–57, under no. 20, fig. 8, relates it to the artist's studiolo panels of 1571–72 in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, while dating the Corsini version somewhat later; notes the pentimenti in the Virgin's eyebrows.

Andrea J. Bayer in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2012–2014." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 72 (Fall 2014), p. 32, ill. (color).

Nadia Bastogi in Puro, semplice e naturale: Nell'arte a Firenze tra Cinque e Seicento. Exh. cat., Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 2014, p. 294, under no. 65, includes it with two other versions (private collection; Museo di Casa Martelli, Florence) of the painting executed from the same cartoon.

The frame is Florentine and dates to about 1900 (see figs. 1–4 above). This parcel gilt and applied walnut reverse profile frame has a basswood substrate and is secured with butterfly keys at its mitered corners. The giltwood sight edge molding incorporates an ogee and a flat bead. The flute-carved top edge falls back to double cavetto and gilded quarter rounds with a step at the back edge. Though lacking corner leaves this handsome frame is a pastiche of a late sixteenth-century Florentine pattern based on altarpieces in Santa Croce, Florence when the church was refurbished by Giorgio Vasari in 1563–84.

Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2020; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files