# Madonna of the Daffodils with the Christ Child and Donors [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [SCOREL, Jan van]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on panel. 56 x 76 cm ## Commentary Madonna of the Daffodils with the Christ Child and Donors c. 1535 Oil on panel. 56 x 76 cm Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Jan van Scorel was an important Netherlandish painter and one of the artists to introduce the Italian Renaissance into the Low Countries. He travelled to Rome, summoned by Alexander VI, and also to Venice. As a result he was able to study ruins, classical sculptures and the works of the great Italian masters including Michelangelo, Raphael and Giorgione. Van Scorel trained with Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen and possibly also with Jan Gossart, while his pupils included major painters such as Antonis Mor. This panel depicts a plain interior adorned only with a green curtain, which creates the background, leaving one section of the wall visible. Before it, and occupying the centre of the composition, is the Virgin holding some narcissi, and the Christ Child. Flanking them is the pair of unidentified donors. The most striking feature of the panel is the contrast between the realism, austerity and sobriety of the donors and the idealization, spontaneous movement and freshness of the group formed by the Virgin and Child. The central group in this painting became extremely popular in its own day and there are numerous copies and versions. The present panel has been related to two other similar compositions, one in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the other in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. ## Related artworks - [12 Members of the Haarlem Brotherhood of Jerusalem Pilgrims]() - [Death of Cleopatra]() - [Diptych]() - [Entry of Christ into Jerusalem]() - [Lochorst Triptych]() - [Lucretia]() - [Mary Magdalen]() - [Portrait of a Man of Thirty-Two Years]() - [Portrait of a Man]() - [Portrait of a Man]() - [Portrait of a Schoolboy]() - [Portrait of a Venetian Man]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()