About the Work
The Counter-Reformation confronted painters with a demand for new kinds of religious propaganda, and so they set out to find fresh ways of rendering familiar subjects. One such Baroque re-interpretation is this Virgin and Child by Guercino, Guercino, painted at the beginning of his stay in Rome (1621-23). The dramatic chiaroscuro, the intimate close-up view, and the simplicity of costume and action alike all contribute to the immediacy of the work’s impact on the viewer.
About the Acquisition
Barbara and Eduard Beaucamp discovered the 'Virgin with Child' in a Frankfurt art shop in 1981 and purchased it at well below its real value, since the work was believed to be a nineteenth-century copy. Eduard Beaucamp was a long-standing editor at the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'; the trained eye of the art critic - and that of his wife, Barbara, also a PhD art historian and a porcelain expert - recognised the outstanding quality of the painting. In 2010 they donated this precious work to the Städel Museum.
