Resumen de Due 'Madonne' del Bronzino in Russia
In 1923 Viktor Lazarev brought to light two masterpieces by Bronzino housed in Russia, the ‘Virgin and Child and Saint John the Baptist’ in the collection of the Pavlovsk Palace Museum near Saint Petersburg, and the ‘Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist’ (the ‘Stroganoff Holy Family’) now in the Pus?kin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. This article returns to these two works, and to their dating. Given its stylistic resemblance to the famous ‘Allegory’ in the National Gallery, London, the ‘Stroganoff Holy Family’ is dated to the mid-1540s, and the picture in Pavlovsk to 1550/1555; the identical version now in the Portland Art Museum, Oregon — long believed to be the original — should be regarded as a later copy or a forgery.
