“Federico Barocci. The Modonna of the cherries. A masterpiece from the Vatican Museums”, exhibition in Turin

The exhibition features a prestigious artwork by Federico Barocci from the Vatican Museums.

Barocci’s Madonna of the Cherries is a Late Italian Renaissance masterpiece. The transparent glazes and tonal transitions convey a palpable softness to the fabrics, while the red of Mary's robe harmonises with the blue of her cloak, a symbol of purity, and touches of yellow and pink complete the chromatic balance. The subject is taken from an episode in the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (XX, 1-2), in which the young Jesus bends a palm tree to pick its fruit and releases water from its roots.

Barocci freely reinterprets the story, replacing the palm with a cherry tree and transforming the miracle into a scene of intimately sweet family life. The Virgin, portrayed in a moment of tender maternal abandonment, welcomes the Child who reaches out his arms towards the cherries offered by Saint Joseph. The donkey on the right grounds the scene in everyday reality, while a luminous landscape opens up in the background. Next to the Virgin, a container of water suggests the Eucharist, completing the theological density of the work.
The painting was commissioned by Simonetto Anastagi in 1570 and sent to Perugia in 1573. Upon Anastagi's death (1602), the canvas passed to the Jesuits of Perugia. When the order was suppressed in 1773, the work was transferred to the Quirinal Palace, subsequently moving to Art Gallery of Pius IX during the 19th century, then to that of Pius X in 1908 and finally, in 1935, to the new Vatican Art Gallery (Pinacoteca) of Pius XI, where it can still be seen today.

The Vatican Museums are to be referred to in the plural as they are a complex of different collections, all of outstanding importance: Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman, Christian, medieval and epigraphic, as well as paintings from different centuries and the great Renaissance works of Raphael in the Stanze and Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Then there are the decorative arts, ethnological collections, historical collections, papal carriages and sedans, all the way through to contemporary art.