Correggio's Adoration of the Child: an intimate and universal scene of the miracle of the Nativity

There is all the essence of Christmas, understood as birth, in the Madonna in Adoration of the Child by Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio (Correggio, c. 1489 - 1534) from his hometown in the lower Reggio area. An intimate and collected scene but at the same time extraordinarily alive and communicative, it becomes a universal symbol of all places and all times: the glances and gestures between the painting’s only two protagonists are enough to understand the mutual love that flows between them. That of a mother who has just given birth to her baby, and that of a child who after hearing only his mother’s voice can finally see her with his little eyes and feel the warmth of her embrace. No words are needed because the intense gaze they exchange speaks for itself; there is a silent magic that pervades the entire work. A silent and tender dialogue that seems to expand beyond the boundaries of the canvas. And so the viewer becomes part of that moment: the miracle of the Nativity is no longer distant in time, but happens here, before his eyes.

The painter chooses to place only the Madonna kneeling before the Child at the center of the scene; no other characters around them, no angels or shepherds, not even St. Joseph. All attention is focused solely on the relationship between mother and child, on their first moments together, on the miracle of life that takes place every time a child is born, on the joy of the happy event.

It is a painting that pulses with intimacy and spirituality, but also with immense humanity. It is a sacred scene that nevertheless represents what is most human and therefore can be approached by all the mothers of the world. The beauty of this Adoration lies in Correggio’s ability to have fused the human and the transcendent, with a delicacy that only the great masters possess. In the rarefied atmosphere of a dawn, the young and radiant Madonna kneels before her newborn son, contemplating him with infinite tenderness. Her sweet and absorbed face sketches a slight smile, and even her eyes, of which only the eyelids are visible, smile. Her hair gathered under her long cloak. The open hands in front of his face in an adoring position indicate awe and wonder. The naked Child, lying on a white cloth that serves as his crib with golden straw stretched over a flap of Mary’s blue mantle, gazes with wide-open eyes at his mother and meanwhile raises his little hand in a gesture typical of infants, to try to grasp his mother’s robe. A simple detail, tender and everyday, that once again reveals the intimate bond between the two. The figure of Our Lady is that of an earthly mother who, in anatmosphere of suspension, as if time itself had stopped, becomes emblematic of the world’s amazement at this miraculous birth. And this is why the painter succeeds with just two figures and a few essential gestures to encapsulate the essence of a moment that is sacred but simultaneously tangible and human, as well as to involve the viewer in theAdoration of the Child. Correggio’s painting is indeed based on the representation of the tenderness of affections, as is clearly visible in this painting, but also on the spontaneous ways in which these are represented.

Also striking the viewer are the vivid and brilliant colors of Mary’s dress and cloak, particularly the blue of the mantle, a symbol of purity and royalty, which contrasts with the whiteness of the skin of both the Madonna and the Child. The vividness is further accentuated by the light that spreads from above on the two figures: a light that not only pervades the center of the composition, but also leads the viewer’s gaze from the Madonna’s serene face to the Child’s small body. But there are actually two sources of light: divine light and the light ofdawn that illuminates the landscape in the background. Thus ananalogy is createdbetween the sacred and the temporal: the birth of Jesus is divine, willed by the Father to bring the Word to Earth, and it takes place through Mary who gives human life to the Child in the beginning of theera of salvation, represented by the dawn.

Particular is the landscape in which the Madonna and Child are immersed, consisting of ruined buildings. It is in fact on the steps almost of an altar, under the base of a large marble column, that the Mother has placed Jesus on the straw bed. The ruins, in the midst of which grass grows and nature takes over, have been read as the fall of paganism and its overcoming with the spread of Christianity, which imposes itself as a new spiritual and moral civilization. But these are not the only elements that would refer to different possible symbolic meanings, thus enriching the reading of the painting. The staircase that can be seen behind the figure of Our Lady would recall the biblical ladder of Jacob’s dream that connected earth and heaven, here, however, in ruins because of humanity’s sin. Next to the ladder can be seen a fig tree, the tree in the Garden of Eden, linked to the sin of Adam and Eve. However, the association of the fig tree with the ruins may suggest a fundamental theme of Christian theology: the sacrifice of Christ as the act that redeems Adam’s first disobedience. The tree, rising from the ruins, thus becomes a sign of hope and regeneration, highlighting the overcoming of original sin. In the background appears instead the palm tree, which in Christian tradition represents martyrdom and is the final symbol of redemption.

In the foreground on the right, on the other hand, there is a saddle that would allude to the flight to Egypt; a detail that might go unnoticed, but which instead recalls the moment when the Holy Family took refuge in Egypt to escape the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod. Finally, the white cloth on which the Child is lying is another detail loaded with symbolic meanings. Often interpreted in a Eucharistic key, it can also be read as an allusion to the shroud that will envelop Christ at the moment of burial, thus anticipating the theme of the Passion and redemptive sacrifice.

This work, which can be dated between 1525 and 1526 and is now in the Uffizi, is in the painter’s full stylistic maturity , a particularly fertile moment in his career, sandwiched between the creation of the frescoes for the dome of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma and those for the dome with theAssumption of the Virgin in the cathedral in the same city. Consider that it was between 1523 and 1525 that Correggio painted the two canvases in the Del Bono chapel in San Giovanni in Parma, depicting the Lamentation and the Martyrdom of Four Saints, where the chromatic range becomes from this time onwards very rich and vibrant, especially in the clothing of the characters, making the flesh tones stand out in a decidedly luministic way, as happens in our Adoration, and where emotional participation is very much present both between the figures depicted and between them and the observer. It was also between 1526 and 1528 that he produced the large altarpiece of Il Giorno (The Day), where again the relative is invited to participate in the gaiety of the moment (note how here all the characters are smiling), and it was between 1522 and 1530 that he completed his very famous Notte (Night), one of the most beautiful, moving and engaging Nativities in all of art history. And precisely from 1525 - 1526 are finally the two canvases executed for Count Maffei of Mantua that feature Venus: in theEducation of Cupid together with Cupid and Mercury, and together with Cupid and a satyr in the painting now in the Louvre.

The Madonna in Adoration of the Child also shares with other paintings in Correggio’s production the artist’s propensity to depict tender Madonnas, which are distinguished by their touching humanity, their intense emotional but above all for their calm intimacy, such as the Madonna of the Basket (1525-26), now at the National Gallery in London, the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1520-21) and The Gypsy Girl (1516-17) both at the Capodimonte Museum, the Madonna and Child with St. John (1517-1518) at the Prado, the Madonna and Child (1513) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Barrymore Madonna (c. 1506) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Intended for private devotion, the origins of this Madonna in adoration are not known: itsoriginal provenance and commission still elude us; however, it appears from the 17th century in the Medici inventory. Indeed, it seems that the work was donated by the Duke of Mantua Ferdinando Gonzaga to Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici: a gift of the highest prestige between two of the most influential Italian courts of the Renaissance. It then reached the Uffizi in 1617 and was placed on November 6 of that year in the room reserved exclusively for the most significant treasures of the Medici collection, the Tribuna, where it remained until 1848. It was thus admired here by generations of visitors, including painters, such as the German Johann Zoffany (Frankfurt am Main, 1733 - Chiswick, 1810), active mainly in England.

The artist depicted the Tribuna degli Uffizi, populated by gentlemen intent on admiring famous paintings and sculptures, in one of his famous paintings completed in 1777, commissioned by Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, consort of King George III, and now housed in the Royal Collection, in which one can recognize on the left wall, between Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola and Justus Sustermans’ Portrait of Galileo Galilei , precisely Correggio’s Madonna in Adoration of the Child. It is not certain, however, that this was the actual arrangement of the works inside the Tribune when Zoffany saw it.

There is no doubt, however, that Correggio’s Madonna is a tender and intimate work full of symbols that today, as in the past, is still capable of touching the heart of the viewer.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.