The Frick's Scottish National Gallery Exhibit & Intimations of a Vleughels-Watteau Competition Over a Woman
John Singer Sargent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, © Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland
The Frick presents ten masterpieces of Italian, Spanish, French, Scottish, and English painting from the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, among them a Botticelli never before on public view in the United States and John Singer Sargent's iconic Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.
The museum is distinguished for its holdings of works by masters of Western art and for its comprehensive collection of Scottish art. A previous collaboration took place in 2000 when the Frick presented a selection of drawings from the Scottish National Gallery, along with Sir Henry Raeburn’s Skating Minister, a centerpiece of the museum's collection. The exhibition features paintings spanning the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries that invite illuminating comparisons to the Frick's permanent collection. Masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery include works by Constable, El Greco, Gainsborough, Raeburn, Ramsay, Reynolds, Velázquez, and Watteau, will travel in extended form to the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The earliest work in the show, making its first public appearance in the United States, is The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child by the great Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli. In this devotional painting, executed in tempera, oil, and gold on canvas about 1485, the Virgin kneels in adoration before her sleeping son. The figures are sheltered by a thornless rose bush with large pink blossoms and a rocky outcropping forming a hortus conclusus (enclosed garden), a symbol of Mary’s purity. The kneeling figure bears the characteristic idealized features of Botticelli's other representations of the Virgin: a high brow, straight nose, strong chin, and heavy coils of golden hair. Turned in profile, the young mother's divine beauty is enhanced by the radiance of the light blue sky behind her and the delicacy of her transparent, embroidered veil, which is surmounted by a golden halo. Mother and son incline toward each other, as if pulled by an invisible force.
The presentation of the infant asleep is unusual among 15th century representations of the Madonna and Child. Although its early history is not known, the contemplative nature of the painting suggests that its original setting was a private house or palace, rather than a church. The picture was in private collections in Great Britain for more than 150 years before it was purchased from the Wemyss Heirloom Trust in 1999 by the Scottish National Gallery.
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