Follower of Pontormo, 'The Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist', probably 1560s

The Christ Child sits on his mother’s lap holding her hand and smiling at us. His cousin, the young Saint John the Baptist, stands grinning behind the Virgin. The group is seen slightly from below. The happy, exuberant expressions of the children contrast with the pensive mood of the Virgin, who holds her son in her arms and looks downward. Christ’s right hand is raised against his mother’s chest in an implied gesture of blessing towards us, as if the movement comes naturally to him and he does not yet realise its significance.

There is another version of this composition, virtually identical in size, in the Art Institute of Chicago. Technical evidence from X-ray images suggests that both paintings were made in the same workshop from the same cartoon, or preliminary drawing. Infrared photographs show that both pictures were traced from the same full-scale study and that identical changes were made in the underpainting of both versions. Changes in the position of the Virgin’s thumb in relation to the Christ Child’s lower lip are common to both pictures. The fingerprints on both panels, particularly in the blending of the paint in the Madonna’s face, suggest that the same artist carried out both works. The panel in Chicago appears to have been left unfinished, as it lacks some modelling and the final glazes. The National Gallery’s painting is more highly finished, with more thickly layered pigment covered with glazes, and it is better preserved. It is likely that both paintings were painted side-by-side at the same time, rather than one being a copy of the other.

The cult of the Madonna was particularly popular in Italy, resulting in a huge demand for such paintings. The Virgin and Saint John the Baptist were especially venerated in Florence, as they were patrons of the city, and images of them were constantly being produced.

The figures have a similar appearance to those in works by the Florentine Mannerist artist Pontormo, with oval faces, deep-set round dark eyes and curly red hair. It is possible that the same model was used for the Virgin here as for the crouching bearer in the foreground of Pontormo’s altarpiece The Deposition of about 1526–8 in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence. Saint John the Baptist is closely based on the Saint John in Andrea del Sarto’s destroyed Madonna of Porta Pinti, known from a surviving preparatory drawing now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. However, it is unlikely that Pontormo himself painted these panels; they were probably produced by an artist in his workshop or a follower of his style.

Although the sixteenth-century art biographer Vasari only named Bronzino as working in Pontormo’s workshop he also says that Pontormo would not allow his young assistants to touch his own works, suggesting that Pontormo employed other artists as well. The Art Institute of Chicago has attributed the paintings to a follower of Bronzino. They have also been attributed to the Florentine painter Maso da San Friano (1536–1571).