Madonna and Child in a Niche (c. 1520s): Art, History and Details

Madonna and Child in a Niche (c. 1520s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antonio del Ceraiolo (Italian).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This image of Madonna with the Christ Child on her lap has been extensively altered by restoration. During the Renaissance, it was important that the Christ Child's genitalia be exposed, for it declared that Christ is the humanization of God, that he experienced temptation, and that in his exposure, he was without shame. When it was repainted, a cloth was added to the image to cover the Christ Child's genitalia. In 1941 the removal of old overpaint returned the painting more closely to its original state.

Object facts

• Title: Madonna and Child in a Niche
• Date: c. 1520s
• Creator attribution: Antonio del Ceraiolo (Italian)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 87 x 72 x 5.5 cm (34 1/4 x 28 3/8 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 59.5 x 43.9 cm (23 7/16 x 17 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.813

Collection credit

Holden Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.
• Rubinstein-Bloch, Stella. Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Etc. Presented by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1917.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.