Madonna Della Seggiola

“Madonna Della Seggiola” (after Rafael)
Copy by anonymous artist.

Originally owned by the Pease Family for 200 years. Mr. Gulick was given the painting in 1975.

The painting, Madonna della Seggiola, was conserved by Barry Bauman Conservation in 2016 with funds donated by Lowell and Marilyn Kramme in honor of Begie Hefner and Frederick L. Miller.

Painting donated by Don Gulick in memory of his daughter, Victoria Elizabeth Gulick.

Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola (sometimes Madonna della Sedia, or Madonna of the Chair) depicts the seated Madonna looking out at the viewer, as if encouraging us to acknowledge the child in her arms. The baby has the chubby proportions of a real infant, so that he becomes more approachable, and his loving relationship with his mother is one that an ordinary person would recognize. Looking towards this divine pair in a worshipful attitude is an older child. We know he is St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Christ, because he is dressed in an animal skin and displays a crucifix. The furry garment symbolizes his time preaching in the wilderness about the coming of the Messiah, and the cross refers both to the death of Christ and to his own death; he was imprisoned and then executed by Herod.

The round shape of Raphael’s canvas, known as a tondo, was rarely used in painting until the Renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Artists of the Renaissance were fascinated by geometric shapes, especially stable ones such as triangles and squares. The circle or sphere was considered a perfect shape because it held both stable and dynamic elements and so could be seen as the most harmonious and meaningful configuration for painting, sculpture and, especially, architecture. Raphael’s composition cleverly fits all of the figures into the circular form (note how the Madonna bends her head at just the right angle), and then counterbalances the roundness with the strong vertical of the chair back at the Madonna’s right arm. When an elaborate square frame was placed on this painting, it celebrated the two shapes most highly regarded by the Renaissance.

The painting was from the Pease Family estate. The family had photographs of this painting in their Grand Avenue mansion dating to the mid-1800’s, but they had been told it had been in their family for more than 200 years.