{virgin and child with the infant}

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, ca. 1504-05

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564)

The 'Taddei Tondo' is the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in Great Britain. Commissioned by Taddeo Taddei, it remained in the Casa Taddei, Florence, until the early nineteenth-century when it was in the possession of Jean-Bapiste Wicar in Rome. Sir George Beaumont purchased the sculpture in 1822 and bequeathed it to the Royal Academy.

At the left side of the tondo stands the infant figure of St. John the Baptist, with his attribute of a baptismal bowl. He presents what appears to be a goldfinch {representing the Passion} to the infant Christ, who momentarily turns away, towards his mother, symbolically anticipating his future destiny.

C.R. Cockerell described seeing the tondo at Beaumont's estate in 1823 as a {great treat}. The unfinished state of the sculpture with its contrasting rough and smooth surfaces did not deter, but enhanced his visual enjoyment of it. He insightfully noted in his diary that:

”the subject seems growing from the marble and emerging into life. it assumes by degrees its shape, features from an unformed mass. as it were you trace and watch its birth from the sculptor's mind as you would an animal from its birth, the chicken breaking through its shell. I have seen nothing but this that conveys the idea in the Greek epigram of a sculptor who says I have no merit but discovering the form which lies within the marble. one feels in beholding it to desire still to go on discovering, still to disclose more.”

I absolutely love getting lost in any galleries art collection with my little babaru{s} each time we feel inspired and creative!