The Madonna by the Fountain (1501): Artwork and History

The Madonna by the Fountain (1501) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Master M.Z. German, active 1500-1550.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The artist known as Master M. Z. produced a number of idiosyncratic devotional and secular engraved subjects in Northern Germany around the beginning of the 16th century. This massively sculptural Madonna fills a dainty cup for the Christ Child from a fountain spout with the features of a lion or possibly a monkey. The composition closely recalls Albrecht Dürer’s well-known Madonna with the Monkey. While Dürer’s Christ Child has been distracted by a bird, here the large, naked Christ tugs at the tunic of the tender, if slightly amused Virgin, as if to suggest breast milk would be preferable to water.

Object facts

• Title: The Madonna by the Fountain
• Date: 1501
• Artist attribution: Master M.Z. German, active 1500-1550
• Place of origin: Germany
• Medium: Engraving on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: Sheet trimmed within platemark: 17.9 × 14.6 cm (7 1/16 × 5 3/4 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1956.813

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.