Botticelli: Two Madonnas at Chambord

: Vierge à l’Enfant avec le jeune saint Jean-Baptiste, atelier de Sandro Botticelli, vers 1510, Tempera et huile sur toile,180 x 134 cm © GrandPalaisRmn (musée de la Renaissance – château d’Ecouen) / Photo : Tony Querrec

The Virgin Mary, Infant Christ, and the young St. John the Baptist from Champigny-en-Beauce underwent extensive restoration work as well as technical and scientific investigation in the C2RMF workshops. Detailed examination using binocular microscopy, micro-sampling and X-ray analysis provided researchers with clues as to the origins and conditions in which the work was made.

It was painted using egg tempera and oil on canvas, two panels joined together, as with the first version in Florence. The colour palette is made up of pigments and lacquers typically used in the 15th to 16th centuries. The presence of zinc in the brown and grains of colourless glass in the red confirm this dating, and Italy as the origin of the work.

The underlying drawing was not made free-hand, it was transferred using the spolvero technique, i.e. pouncing: holes tracing the outlines of the design are pricked on to a copy and then dabbed with powdered carbon black to transfer the figures on to the new canvas. The background decor, however, was painted directly, and so is different in each of the three known paintings.

Several artists worked on creating the piece, some of whom were more experienced than others. The Virgin’s face, for instance, shows greater softness and precision than the children’s.

The Champigny painting is well and truly a studio piece on which the master, Sandro Botticelli, may have worked alongside his pupils.

Vierge à l’Enfant avec le jeune saint Jean-Baptiste, Sandro Botticelli, vers 1505, Tempera et huile sur toile, 134 x 92 cm © Photo SCALA, Florence – Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali e del Turismo, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / image Scala

The painting from the Pitti Palace (c. 1505) gave rise to two replicas executed by Botticelli’s studio: one is housed in Birmingham (England), and the other is on loan to Chambord from the commune of Champigny-en-Beauce. Such variations on the same theme indicate both the productivity of Botticelli’s studio and the fact that a successful painting was frequently copied.

In order to avoid exact duplication, the original scene was repeated with variations involving, in this case, the group of figures being reversed and background differentiation.

The magnificent rose bush with open buds from the first version, symbolic of the Virgin and Christ, was replaced by sober architecture in the following versions. The shadow of the Virgin Mary, added to the Champigny painting, seems to indicate that it was made later (c. 1510).

Other differences are: the sparser and less detailed bed of herbs, the treatment of the haloes, the length of the cross, the Christ Child’s dress, etc.

In both compositions, the figures’ monumentality is exaggerated by the Virgin’s pose as she leans forwards to bring the children closer together. Her closed, melancholy gaze seems to show her weighed down by the impending drama of her son destined to be sacrificed on the cross.

Alessandro Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), is a major painter from the Florentine Renaissance. He first trained as a goldsmith before entering the studios of two of the greatest painters of the mid-fifteenth century:  Filippo Lippi then Andrea del Verrocchio. By the early 1470s, he was head of his own bottega (studio), and was supported by many students and assistants, enabling him to take on a greater number of commissions.  His degree of personal involvement was determined by the level of prestige of each commission: Botticelli either worked alone, with an assistant, or trusted the latter to complete the task alone.

Around 1475, there was a significant turning-point in his career when he gained the patronage of the Medici. He was then requested to make portraits of the foremost members of Florentine society, and execute prestigious commissions further afield. He participated for instance in the decoration of the Sistine chapel in Rome. A year later, in 1482, when he returned to Florence, the period that marked his finest years began, the period in which he made the pieces for which he is still renowned today: Primavera, Pallas and the Centaur, Birth of Venus, Madonna of the Magnificat, etc.

When the Medici were exiled in 1494, a conservative government, headed by Savonarola, the fanatic monk, was installed. At this point, Botticelli’s work took a more sombre turn: his non-religious works became austere allegories while his religious figures, dominated by monumental architectural forms, show anguish and pain. This is the context in which the Virgin and Child paintings displayed here were made.

– The exhibition will be accompanied by educational videos and enhanced by an augmented reality mediation system;

– An exhibition catalogue (€9.50) will be on sale in the château shop.

Practical information
The exhibition is included in the admission ticket: full price €19; reduced price €16.50; free for under-26s from EU countries.

Opening times :
20 October 2024 – 28 October 2024: 9am – 6pm.
28 October 2024 – 20 December 2024: 9am – 5pm
21 December 2024 – 4 January 2025: 9am – 6pm
24 and 31 December 2024: 9am – 4pm

Last admission ½ hour before the château closes. The formal gardens close 30 minutes before the château.