Madonna and Child was painted by one of the most influential artists of the late 13th and early 14th century, Duccio di Buoninsegna. This iconic image of the Madonna and Child, seen throughout the history of western art, holds significant value in terms of stylistic innovations of religious subject matter that would continue to evolve for centuries.

The Madonna and Child is understood to be an intimate, devotional image.

Some evocations of this understanding come from the burnt edges on the bottom of the original engaged frame caused by burning candles that likely would have sat just beneath Looking past the abrupt simplicity of the image, one can begin to understand the changes Duccio was applying to the depiction of religious figures in painting during the early 14th century. Duccio followed other innovative Italian artists of the time like Giotto, both of whom strove to move beyond the purely iconic Byzantine and Italo-Byzantine canon and attempted to create a more tangible connection between the viewer and the objects in the painting. For example, the parapet that sits at the bottom of the painting works as a visual enticement for the viewer to look past and into the moment that is captured between the Virgin and Christ Child. At the same time, the parapet also acts as a barrier between the vernacular world and the sacred.

The flight into Egypt is a story recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13–23) and in New Testament apocrypha. Soon after the visit by the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus since King Herod would seek the child to kill him. The episode is frequently shown in art, as the final episode of the Nativity of Jesus in art, and was a common component in cycles of the Life of the Virgin as well as the Life of Christ. Within the narrative tradition, iconic representation of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" developed after the 14th century.

when the Magi came in search of Jesus, they went to Herod the Great in Jerusalem to ask where to find the newborn "King of the Jews". Herod became paranoid that the child would threaten his throne, and sought to kill him (2:1–8). Herod initiated the Massacre of the Innocents in hopes of killing the child (Matthew 2:16–Matthew 2:18). But an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him to take Jesus and his mother into Egypt (Matthew 2:13).

Egypt was a logical place to find refuge, as it was outside the dominions of King Herod, but both Egypt and Judea were part of the Roman Empire, linked by a coastal road known as "the way of the sea",making travel between them easy and relatively safe

 

Federico Cantú 1907-1989 Mexican Artist

Born in 1907 in Cadereyta de Jimenez, Nuevo León, Federico Cantú was a prodigious talent who with barely fourteen years of age began his artistic career. In 1922 he enrolled at Alfredo Ramos Martínez, a newly established experimental school in Coyoacán, Mexico City. There he learned from his teacher's impressionistic techniques and before long he began working as an assistant to Diego Rivera, who newly arrived from Europe and was about to unleash an extravagant mural project that would change Mexico City and propel the careers of numerous artists.

Mexican philanthropist
and intellectual Raúl Rangel Frías eloquently described Federico Cantu's colors as full of

lyrical emotions, his luminous reds and greens create and add substance to the immaterial assets of the painting. Indeed, he believed the artist had a magic touch that enable him to endow his pigments with life. More importantly, he considered Cantu's way of painting, even as a young artist, full of energy as the delicate lines of his compositions conveyed rhythmic design.

However, Cantú did not stay long in Mexico City and sailed for Paris in 1924 where he lived a bohemian lifestyle for almost a decade. Almost immediately after his arrival, he found himself amid all the avant-garde luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, Mateo Hernández, José Decrefft , Lino Eneas Spilimbergo, Gino Severini , Tsugouharu Foujita, the surrealists André Breton, Paul Eluard, José Moreno Villa, Cesar Vallejo, Antonion Artaud (who lived in Mexico in Cantu's house in 1936) and others.

While living in Paris, Cantú goes to California to have his first big art exhibition where his Madonnas and Virgins were displayed. The devotion to the sacred art is a constant theme in his work since his days at Escuela al Aire Libre de Coyoacán, increasing gradually until 1928 when Cantú painted his first mural in Pasadena in which he included the figure of the "Cristo Negro".

In the manner of Botticelli, Cantú portrayed the Madonna, as well as the "Descanso en la Huida a Egipto", where the Virgin and the Child are the central figures. The series of ink drawings in Cantú's sketchbooks also narrate a lot of biblical themes where, in the young artist's mind, woman represent a duality, which in one hand represents a symbol of fertility and in the other a symbol of eroticism.

Federico Cantú said on his return to Paris in 1930: "I found that my atelier had been leased and the works were sold to the highest bidder. I must have lost thousands of paintings including drawings, sculptures, sketches and oils".

At that time Federico did not imagine that although he arrived back in Paris with the idea of completing the ten-year cycle he had begun in 1924, his work would be soon once more lost because, as told by Antonin Artaud in his 1936 visit to Mexico, France was faced by the uncertainty of another war.

When Cantu returned to Mexico, he had extraordinary art exhibitions together with Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Jose Clemente Orozco and Doctor Atl. Soon after he painted the Le Papillon.
The portable mural "Life, passion and death of the harlequin" (Papillon Bar, 1934), reflects the bohemian spirit of Montparnasse. The figure of the harlequin accompanied by female nudes, was a result of the immense inspiration Cantú acquired from his time in Paris.

A year later Cantu starts a long exhibition career in California at the Stendahl Galleries where Picasso's "Guernica" was also displayed at the same time.

Throughout his life, Federico was attracted to the world of mythology, as demonstrated by two of his earliest paintings: Ícaro (1926) and Orféo (1926).

Cantú, as a tireless engraver and sculptor, recreates scenes and characters taken from the Greco-Roman and Mesoamerican mythology, describing myths and narrating religious stories while including Catholic iconography.

Federico Cantú carries on the religious theme by painting years later the "Purísima Church in Monterrey", the "Parish Church of San Miguel de Allende", the "Former Convent of San Diego" and the "Capilla de los Misioneros de Guadalupe" in Mexico City, and of course in the Collection of Paintings located in the Vatican Museums.

Cantú's work also shows a series of mythological figures such as Ulysses, Apollo, Diana, Nestor, Cassandra, Eurydice, the Minotaur, Penelope, and mythical creatures like centaurs, unicorns, fauns and muses.

With the fusion of narrative and history, Federico Cantú becomes a grand master of artistic engravings. The plates, delicately worked from an ink drawing with astonishing freehand strokes, constitute the extraordinary testimony of a life dedicated to art, engraved for eternity on plates of copper, zinc, gold, silver, steel and stone.

Adolfo Cantú
Mexico City, December 2022

Cantú Y de Teresa Collection