Virgin with the Child (Madonna Frizzoni)

This “Madonna with the Child” is also known as “Madonna Frizzoni”, by the name of the person who donated it to the Museum in 1919. Although its repainted background is incomplete and it has suffered from its nineteenth-century transfer from wood to canvas, the artwork is entirely by Giovanni, in complete mastery of his unmistakable, open style.

The pensive Virgin in unusually shown in a wine-red dress, pink cape and veil that, held by a jewel, only partly covers her face. She has an expression of sad foreboding and her hands seem to protect the Child, who is seated on the parapet, symbolising both the sarcophagus and the altar of the Eucharistic sacrifice. An early tradition claims that the delicate figure of the Virgin is a portrait of Giovanni’s older sister Nicolosia, wife of Andrea Mantegna.