La Madonna dell’umiltà di Rogier van der Weyden. Storia, evoluzione e rifunzionalizzazione di un modello iconografico

Abstract

The study examines a currently unique case in art history, already identified in recent Belgian studies. It concerns a Madonna embraced by the Child, according to a compositional solution certainly elaborated in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, which had such unprecedented suc-cess that it was taken up in more than 200 replicas made by various artists from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th century. For the first time, the corpus of known replicas is systematically analysed, to which others still unpublished are added, from an iconological point of view, cataloguing them in detail and identifying all the iconographic versions. From the initial Madonna of Humility, in fact, the Rogerian invention is re-elaborated and re-functionalised, so as to obtain, depending on the case, the Rest from the Flight into Egypt, Madonna of Good Counsel, Madonna of Consolation, Madonna of the Rose Garden, the Queen of Heaven and various other images that are the object of particular devotion such as Our Lady of Sammarei, Our Lady of Tervuren and Our Lady of Recouvrance.

Keywords

• rogier van der weyden
• virgin and child