Pisanello, 'The Virgin and Child with Saints', about 1435-41

The Virgin and Child with Saints

Pisanello

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This puzzling painting seems to be a picture in two halves. At the top the Virgin and Child embrace in a gilded sunburst. Below, Saint Anthony Abbot rings his bell and glowers at an elegant knight. This is Saint George, dressed in fifteenth-century armour, and a stylish straw hat – a contemporary French fashion. His emblem of the dragon curls around his legs, snarling at Anthony’s boar.

This is the only surviving signed work by Pisanello and one of only four panel paintings that are certainly by him. We don't know who this painting was made for, though Pisanello was a court painter and worked for various Italian noble families. It was always a single panel and its small scale suggests it was intended for private enjoyment.

In-depth

This puzzling painting seems to be a picture in two halves. At the top the Virgin and Child embrace affectionately in a gilded sunburst which explodes in a blue sky. Below, ignoring them completely, two saints and medley of animals stand in a wooded wilderness. On the left a bearded Saint Anthony Abbot rings his bell and glowers at an elegant knight. This is Saint George, dressed in fifteenth-century armour, and a stylish straw hat, a contemporary French fashion. A dragon – his emblem – curls around his legs and snarls at Anthony’s boar.

This is the only surviving signed work by Pisanello, and one of only four panel paintings that are certainly by him (he also painted frescoes and made medallions). Another is The Vision of Saint Eustace. Here, very curiously, his signature, ‘Pisanus p[inxi]t’ (‘Pisano painted [this]’) is in the form of curling fronds of greenery with small blue flowers at the corners – right in the middle, at the bottom.

We don‘t know who this painting was made for, though Pisanello was a court painter and worked for various Italian noble families. It was always a single panel and its small scale suggests it was for private enjoyment. The iconography is unusual and must have had a particular meaning for the original commissioner. In some ways it resembles manuscript illuminations made for French aristocracy: the Virgin and Child shown in a sunburst comes from the medieval Apocalypse, the illustrated Book of Revelations, in which a woman clothed in the sun gives birth to a child to rule all nations. Saints George and Anthony were very widely venerated in northern Italy and they were often shown together, although rarely alone like this. Saint Anthony was a hermit, while Saint George was regarded as a patron of the medieval knightly class. Perhaps they represent two different ways of life, the ascetic – that is, renouncing worldly riches and pleasure – and the courtly.

Pisanello was especially famous in his lifetime for his images of animals. No preparatory drawings for this panel survive, but similar boars and dragons are found in drawings attributed to him (now in the Louvre, Paris and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). He often reused details from drawings and model books, making it hard to date this panel. The horses’ heads are especially close to drawings Pisanello made for frescoes in Saint‘Anastasia in Verona around 1434–8. The panel was probably painted shortly after that.

The painting was not in good condition when it was bought in 1862 by Sir Charles Eastlake, the National Gallery’s first director, and was extensively restored for him. Very little of the surface of the upper part of the painting is original, but the restoration seems to have been reasonably faithful. In places we can see the underdrawing through the restored layers, as in the faces of the Virgin and Child. An elaborate gilded frame was made for Eastlake and contains copies of medals with portraits of Pisanello and Leonello d’Este, once thought to be a model for Saint George.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Virgin and Child with Saints Anthony Abbot and George
Artist: Pisanello
Artist dates: about 1394? - 1455
Date made: about 1435-41
Medium and support: egg tempera on wood
Dimensions: 46.5 × 29 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Presented by Lady Eastlake in memory of Sir Charles Eastlake, 1867
Inventory number: NG776
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Sir Charles Lock Eastlake

Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake
Frame: 15th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

Casa Pasetti (Ferrara?) at an unknown date. By 1835 in the collection of Giovanni Battista Costabili Containi (1756–1841) and then of his nephew G. Costabili (1815–1882) at Ferrara; still there in 1858; bought by Sir Charles Eastlake, and sent to England in 1862. Presented by Lady Eastlake in memory of Sir Charles Eastlake, PRA, first Director of the National Gallery, 1867.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Dillian Gordon, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings’, vol. 1, London 2003; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2011

Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery

The National Gallery (London)

27 July 2011 - 30 October 2011
2022

Pisanello. The Tumult of the World

Museo di Palazzo Ducale (Mantua)

7 October 2022 - 8 January 2023

Bibliography

1894

C. Gruyer, 'Vittore Pisano, appelé aussi le Pisanello, deuxième article', Gazette des beaux-arts, I, 1894, pp. 198‑218
1895

J.P. Richter, 'Critical Studies on Pictures at the National Gallery, II, Pictures of the Veronese School', Art Journal, XI, 1895, pp. 37-42
1905

G.F. Hill, Pisanello, London 1905
1923

R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols, The Hague 1923
1929

G.M. Richter, 'Pisanello Studies, II', The Burlington Magazine, LV/318, 1929, pp. 128‑33
1951

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1951
1957

M.L. D'Ancona, The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, New York 1957
1961

M. Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd edn, London 1961
1963

O. Pächt, 'The Limbourgs and Pisanello', Gazette des beaux-arts, LXII, 1963, pp. 110-21
1972

G.A. Dell'Acqua, L'opera completa del Pisanello, Milan 1972
1972

G. Paccagnini, Pisanello e il ciclo cavalleresco di Mantova, Milan 1972
1972

B. Degenhart, 'Ludovico Gonzaga in einer Miniatur Pisanellos', Pantheon, 1972, pp. 193‑210
1977

L. Benini, 'Descrizione della quadreria Costabili', Musei ferraresi: bollettino annuale, VII, 1977, pp. 79-96
1982

N. Gramaccini, 'Wie Jacopo Bellini Pisanello besiegte: Der Ferrareser Wettbewerb von 1441', Idea: Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunsthalle, I, 1982, pp. 27‑53
1985

C.T. Dowd, 'The Travel Diary of Otto Mündler', The Walpole Society, LI, 1985
1986

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised edn, London 1986
1990

A. Ugolini, 'Rivedendo la Collezione Costabili di Ferrara', Paragone, XLI/489, 1990, pp. 50‑76
1991

J. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery, New Haven 1991
1992

L. Bellosi, 'The Chronology of Pisanello's Mantuan Frescoes Reconsidered', The Burlington Magazine, CXXXIV/1075, 1992, pp. 657-60
1993

J. Anderson, 'Documents for the History of Collecting: 16: The Rediscovery of Ferrarese Renaissance Painting in the Risorgimento', The Burlington Magazine, CXXXV/1085, 1993, pp. 539-49
1994

H. Trebbin, Sankt Antonius: Geschichte, Kult und Kunst, Frankfurt am Main 1994
1995

B. Degenhart, Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, Munich 1995
1995

D. Cordellier, 'Documenti e fonti su Pisanello', Verona illustrata, VIII, 1995
1996

L. Puppi, Pisanello: Una poetica dell'inatteso, Milan 1996
1996

D. Cordellier et al., Pisanello: Le peintre aux sept vertus (exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, 6 May - 5 August 1996), Paris 1996
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2003

Gordon, Dillian, National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, 1, London 2003

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

More works by Pisanello

The Vision of Saint Eustace