Solly Madonna

The Solly Madonna is one of the earliest paintings of Raphael.

The reading Maria with the child is referred to by its previous owner Edward Solly as Madonna Solly. The picture was taken when Raphael was still working in the workshop Pietro Perugino, shortly after he had performed with the great altarpiece of San Agostino in Città di Castello its first major contract. The screen layout he took over from his teacher. For the Christ child he used probably a box that Perugino himself has used several times. But unlike Perugino Raphael manages to make a human, shaped by love relationship between mother and child visible.

The motif of Maria reading Raphael often used in the sequence, so in the time- related Madonna Norton in Pasadena (Norton Simon Museum ), the Madonna Conestabile in St. Petersburg ( Hermitage ), the Madonna of the Goldfinch in Florence ( Galleria degli Uffizi ) and the Madonna Colonna in Berlin ( Gemäldegalerie ). A drawing for the image is in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

The image was known only to the acquisition of the collection Solly in 1821 by the Royal Museum in Berlin. The authorship of Raphael has never been doubted since the discovery. Only in dating you are at odds. It varies 1500-1504, which by modern research a date in the years 1502/ 03 is preferred. Roberto Longhi in 1952 published a second, contemporary version of the picture, which he regarded as handwritten first version of the Madonna Solly. This was in 1961 in an Italian private collection, but is ignored by most authors.

The image was consistently exhibited by the acquisition by the Royal Museum until 1939. After that, it was outsourced in the Friedrichshain flak tower. When the hostilities of World War II ever approached Berlin, the image has been outsourced in the spring of 1945 in the potash mine Kaiseroda - flag in Thuringia, where it fell into the hands of the Americans. This brought it into the General Art Collection Point in Wiesbaden. Finally, in 1956 it returned to Berlin, where it was issued from 1956 to 1997 permanently in the Dahlem Museum. Since 1998 it is shown in the new art gallery at the Cultural Forum in Berlin.