Maestro della Madonna del Topo

Madonna with Child, terracotta with traces of polychromy, circa 1470, by the “Master of the Madonna del topo” (Master of the Madonna of the Mouse). Measurements: 52.5 cm in height, 33.5 cm in width, 17 cm maximum depth. The Master of the Madonna of the Mouse is considered the last genuine expression of late Gothic sculpture in Lombardy, before the arrival of the masters of the Tuscan Renaissance. His profile was highlighted by Aldo Galli, allowing him to be attributed a corpus of about twenty sculptures and terracotta fragments located in the territories of Crema, Milan and Monza. The artist's conventional name is taken from a Madonna with Child owned by the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan - coming from the nearby “Contrada dei ratti” (district of rats), the current via Cesare Cantù - which the ancient Milanese called “Madonna del topo” (Madonna of the Mouse) for the presence of a small animal perched on the Child's shoulder. The largest work is located in Mozzanica, in the upper Crema area, and it is a Gothic terracotta polyptych of three meters by two, with a Madonna with Child in the center surrounded by 5 characters on two orders closed by buttresses; the fact that this work has reached us is a very rare case, because, of the many terracotta polyptychs testified by the sources, only a few fragments have escaped dismemberment and Napoleonic suppressions. One of the most intact fragments is the Madonna with Child presented here, which constituted the central part of a small terracotta ancona of a private nature. Contained in the elegant oval of the mantle, the figures of the Madonna and Child denote a plastic firmness and a fullness of forms typical of a mature temporal placement, and should be seen as a further stage in the active journey of this Master (P.Bosio, see bibl.). The work has recently returned from Switzerland, where it circulated with the erroneous attribution to a Tuscan artist; recognized by Studio Zenale, it constitutes an interesting acquisition to the catalog of the "Master of the Madonna del topo". Provenance: - Private collection, Arezzo; - Fischer auction A409 lot 3879, Lucerne 2010 (with erroneous attribution to Antonio Fedrighi de' Tolomei); - Ehem. Galleria Serodine, Dr.Wladimir Rosenbaum, Ascona 1967. Bibliography: - Paola Bosio, Lombard Terracottas in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Nomos Edizioni 2020, pag.199, fig.97