FRANCESCO BRINA e bottega
Florence, 1540 – 1586
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
oil on panel, cm. 70×50
The panel depicts the Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist. The Virgin is dressed in her customary red tunic and blue mantle, the latter having, over time, shifted slightly towards a greenish hue. The Christ Child, shown nude upon his mother’s lap, leans forward to embrace His cousin, John the Baptist, who stands beside them. In the background opens a beautiful landscape view, with a castle perched on a hill and a town lying in the valley below.
The work is typical of the workshop of Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio and his principal pupil Francesco del Brina, one of the most prolific Florentine ‘bottegas’ of the 16th century. Both, heirs to the artistic legacy of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, who had himself engaged with the refined currents of Raphael’s art, became leading figures in Florence during the period of the High Mannerism.
Francesco del Brina also took part in the decoration of the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio, an experience that deeply shaped his engagement with the figurative culture of the Medici court. While the chromatic range appears to derive from Francesco Salviati, the monumental forms, including those of the two children, resonate with the works of Giorgio Vasari and with the broader Michelangelesque tradition.
Yet it is the sweetness of the faces, the swift handling of paint, and the soft drapery folds that most convincingly indicate the authorship of Francesco del Brina, at a moment of close proximity to his master Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, around 1570. The existence of several workshop replicas of this composition suggests collaborative production; however, in this example the most legible passages of paint reveal such coherence and quality as to support the hypothesis of full autograph execution.