Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 99. (Budapest, 2003)

THE YEAR 2003 - NEW ACQUISITIONS - CIFKA, BRIGITTA: Sir Joseph Noel Patorís Madonna with the Sleeping Christ Child and the Infant Saint John the Baptist

King, and the radiant youthfulness of the saint, as well.

5 The painting is to be recorded in the cultural history of the Scottish-Hungarian relations. Paton's success was from the beginning stimulated by the auspices of Queen Victoria, who made a number of purchases from him and in 1863 commissioned the artist to come, together with his family, to Windsor in order to paint the royal family assembled around the sculpted bust of the late Prince Albert. This work however remained unfinished due to the illness of the artist. Victoria made him Her Majesty's Limner for Scotland in 1866 and a knight in the following year. He was also free to use the Royal Castle in Dunfermline. Our picture (fig. 34) shows the Virgin sitting in the open air, holding a book on her knees. Nestled up under her right arm, the infant Baptist can be seen only partially, while the uncovered body of the Christ Child sleeping on a cloth before them can be seen entirely. Behind Mary is an oak tree, leaning to the right, dividing the vista that opens up towards distant waterside fortifications at the foot of mountains. The picture reflects an inspiration by Raphael and sixteenth-century Florentine painting in general. Paton's ability to integrate the borrowed motifs and his own fantasy as well as to permeate it with a romantic mood is however laudable. The figure of the Virgin is modelled on the Madonna del prato in Vienna. The attitude of the head casting a downward glance as well as the swollen lids and the tender look are rooted in the Leonardesque tradition. Paton was obviously working from engravings, but, albeit not having travelled to the Continent until he was 41, he could have had access to original Raphaels in London. He may have seen the Bridgewater Madonna in the Sutherland collection: the diagonal pose of the Child is similar to the Raphaelian model, while his hip and feet are direct repetitions after it. The remarkably fine background however has no direct source. The way the Virgin's robe conceals a part of the Baptist's body is rather alien to the Italian examples. The oblique oak tree that unsettle the tranquil harmony of the traditional triangle composition, as well as the meticulously detailed treatment of the bark and the foliage and the vegetation in the foreground, with the flittering butterflies, point towards the mature Pre-Raphaelite period of the artist. The foreground is painted spontaneously. The underdrawing, executed in pencil, can be faintly felt under the thinly applied paint layer to the naked eye, but is clearly visible in the UV-reflectograph (fig. 35).

6 Raphaelesque Madonnas are not unusual in Paton's oeuvre. The Budapest paintings importance however lies in the fact that each of the other pictures of this kind are known only from written sources and are of a later date.

7 He may have been inspired to execute such works by inner inclinations, too, but he was encour5 Ibid.,-pi 12. 6 The canvas is relined, and there are some smaller areas of retouching in the surface. ' Both in the records of the artist and the contemporary exhibition catalogues mean this iconographie type when referring to a Holy Family, rather than the group of the Virgin, the Child and Saint Joseph.