Virgin and Child (c. 1475–1485): Art, History and Details

Virgin and Child (c. 1475–1485) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pietro Lombardo (Italian, c. 1435–1515).

The work and its context

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

In the later 1400s, artists increasingly infused sacred subject matter with a classical vocabulary. The shallow relief and simplified forms ultimately stemmed from ancient sculpture, bringing gravity as well as novelty to a conventional theme. Yet naturalistic elements such as the baby’s bulging navel, chubby wrists, and shirt pulled up to reveal his genitals all humanize Christ, a critical principle of Christian dogma.

Object facts

• Title: Virgin and Child
• Date: c. 1475–1485
• Creator attribution: Pietro Lombardo (Italian, c. 1435–1515)
• Culture: Italy, Venice
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 54.6 x 37.2 x 9.5 cm (21 1/2 x 14 5/8 x 3 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1920.273

Collection credit

General Income Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 7, no. 8 (1920): 123-26.
• Milliken, William. "Italian Renaissance Bronzes." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 34, no. 4 (April 1947): 64-68.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.