FOGG MUSEUM EXHIBITS "MADONNA" OF BELLINI

The following description of Bellini's "Madonna and Child" in the Fogg Museum has been written for the Crimson by an officer of the museum. The article stresses the recent movement to place on exhibit in a conspicuous place a single picture.

In the Fogg Art Museum, hanging in a position of considerable importance is a picture of a "Madonna and Child" from the school of Giovanni Bellini. The Madonna wears a red gown, brilliant blue mantle, and luminous silvery white hood. The drapery of the background is bright yellow green. The sky on the left is pale blue, and the rocks neutral brown. The parapet is a dark red brown; the book is red. On the parapet is the signature: Ioannes Bellinvs.

The panel formerly belonged to W. H. Matthews of Bromley, Kent, who died in 1890. It was later in the collection of C. Fairfax Murray, London, and was placed in the Museum in 1902.

The picture shows the sweet and grave dignity typical of Bellini, but it is almost certainly the work of one of his pupils, perhaps Niccolo Rondinelli. In the Layard collection of the National Gallery is another version, differing only in that the Madonna's hood is more elaborately embroidered and that there is more of the landscape visible on the left. This panel also is signed on the parapet: Ioannes Bellinvs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle think that Basaiti helped Bellini in the Layard Collection picture. Mr. Perkins believes that these pictures were executed by Rondinelli. He states (1905) that a third version is in the collection of the Marquis Visconti Venosta at Rome. Mr. Berenson, in his Venetian Painting in America discusses the Fogg Museum and the Layard collection Madonnas at length, and agrees with Mr. Perkins that Rondinelli is the probable author of the Layard Madonna, at least. He thinks that both pictures are copies of an original Bellini, apparently painted towards 1490, which has disappeared. Mr. Berenson further points out the connection of the Fogg Museum painting, in certain details, with a Madonna in the Duomo at Chioggia and a Madonna formerly in the Berberini Gallery, Rome, a Madonna and Child attributed to Rondinelli.

This picture hangs on the first landing of the stairway leading to the second floor of the Museum. It has been placed in this conspicuous position that the casual visitor to the galleries may carry away the remembrance of at least this one fine picture, that the students, hurrying through the lower halls to lectures may perhaps be drawn up the stairway to an inspection of the beauty displayed on the second floor, that lovers of art may see this masterpiece alone and undisturbed by the juxtaposition of greater or inferior art.