Maternité

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1865-1953)

c. 1897

“From a painting”

Source: The Studio 10 (February 1897): 8.

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“Look at Maternité! It is the soft summer twilight hour, the heavens full of limpid brightness, and on the horizon, behind the palatial outlines and the lofty campaniles, a mass of purest gold, reflected in the mirror of the lagoons. Seated on a throne the Virgin holds in her arms the divine Bambino. What tenderness in the Mother's attitude, as she bends in all eagerness and attention over the little form of the Child-Christ! What delightful delicacy in the way she holds Him with her pure and lovely hands. And He — there is nothing of the conventionally divine about the Child, who is human infancy itself, in loose swaddling-clothes, with unformed baby head, and plump little hand playing with the Mother's lips. When one thinks how banal, how traditional the subject might have been made, it is refreshing to see the quite original note of tender realism and moving grace with which the painter has invested it” (9, 11).

References

Moury, Gabriel. “A Dream Painter: M. L. Lévy-Dhurmer.” The Studio. 10 (February 1897): 2-11. Internet Archive. Web. 28 February 2012.

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Last modified 29 December 2010