Virgin and Child

Artist: Gentile da Fabriano (Italian, Fabriano, ca. 1370–1427)

ca. 1420–24

European Art

On view, 2nd floor, European Art

This is the only surviving mature work signed by the seminal Renaissance master Gentile da Fabriano, who worked for major patrons in the early years of the fifteenth century in cities throughout the Italian peninsula from Venice and Milan to Rome. It is believed to have been painted in Florence and to have been singularly influential on two young artists there: Masaccio and Fra Angelico. The figures are surrounded with red and white roses (called blooms of Paradise)—symbols of the Virgin’s purity—as well as pomegranates, signifying immortality and the Resurrection.

Medium

Tempera on panel

Dimensions

unframed: 36 1/8 × 24 3/4 in. (91.8 × 62.8 cm)

Credit Line

University Purchase from James Jackson Jarves

Accession Number

1871.66

Culture

Italian, Fabriano

Period

15th century

Classification

Paintings

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance
James Jackson Jarves Collection, Florence, to 1871; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
Bibliography
  • John J. Marciari, Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings before 1850 in the San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2015), 78–80, fig. 11.2
  • Susan B. Matheson, Art for Yale: A History of the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2001), 44 (detail), 45–46
  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 600
  • Francis Steegmuller, The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951), 299, fig. 9
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

religious art

Inscriptions

Inscribed: lower left in Gothic minuscules, GENT[ILIS DE] FABRIANO

Technical metadata and APIs

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