The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Annibale_Carracci_Madonna_del_silienzio.jpg/390px-Annibale_Carracci_Madonna_del_silienzio.jpg)
The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist or Il Silenzio (The Silence) is oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, now in the Royal Collection. It is currently on display in Hampton Court Palace.
It was produced around 1599-1600 whilst he was working on the Palazzo Farnese ceiling paintings in Rome.[1] Intended as a small devotional work, it measures only 51.2 x 68.4 cm. A preparatory sketch for the whole composition survives in black chalk, ink, and pen, whilst John the Baptist's pointing gesture is similar to that of the right-hand putto in the contemporaneous Pietà, with both paintings using a pyramidical composition. Some pentimenti are visible to X-ray, infra-red reflectography, and the naked eye.
The work was much copied and referenced, most notably around 1605 by Domenichino (Louvre).[2] It was recorded in inventories of the Farnese Collection at Palazzo del Giardino in Parma in 1678 and circa 1680 before being acquired in 1766 for George III by Richard Dalton - Dalton then also owned the black chalk, pen and ink sketch for it. The following year Francis Cotes produced a pastel portrait of George's wife Queen Charlotte holding their daughter Charlotte, Princess Royal and making a gesture similar to the Virgin Mary's in tribute to the acquisition of Il Silenzio.[3]
Carracci's work was initially hung at Buckingham House, where Francesco Bartolozzi engraved it in 1768. George's son the Prince Regent had Henry Bone produce an enamel-on-copper copy of the work in 1814, whilst the original was on show at Windsor Castle when Charles Wild produced the illustrations for Henry Pyne's Royal Residences, published in 1819.
- Domenichino's copy
- Cotes' pastel
- Bone's copy
- The illustration in Pyne, showing Madonna above the fireplace
References
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- List of paintings
- The Laughing Youth (1580s)
- The Beaneater (1580–1590)
- Butcher's Shop (1583)
- Crucifixion with Saints (1583)
- Corpse of Christ (1583–1585)
- An Allegory of Truth and Time (1584–1585)
- Baptism of Christ (1585)
- Pietà with Saints Clare, Francis and Mary Magdalene (1585)
- The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1585)
- The Vision of Saint Eustace (1585–1586)
- Two Children Teasing a Cat (1587–1588)
- Madonna and Child with Saints (1588)
- Venus with a Satyr and Two Cupids (1588–1590)
- Lamentation (1587–1590)
- Self-Portrait in Profile (1590s)
- Assumption of the Virgin (Madrid; 1590)
- The Virgin Appears to Saint Luke and Saint Catherine (1592)
- Self-Portrait (1593)
- Madonna and Child with Saints (1593)
- Resurrection (1593)
- Madonna and Child in Glory over the City of Bologna (c. 1593)
- Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1593–1594)
- Saint Roch Giving Alms (1587–1595)
- Fishing (before 1595)
- Hunting (before 1595)
- River Landscape (c. 1590)
- Christ and the Canaanite Woman (1594–1595)
- Entombment of Christ (c. 1595)
- Venus, Adonis and Cupid (c. 1595)
- Camerino Farnese
- The Choice of Hercules (1596)
- Christ in Glory with Saints and Odoardo Farnese (c. 1597–1598)
- The Death of Saint Francis (1597–1598)
- Saint Margaret of Antioch (1599)
- Christ Appearing to Saint Anthony Abbot (1598–1600)
- Christ Crowned with Thorns (1598–1600)
- Christ Crowned with Thorns (Bologna) (c. 1598–1600)
- The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (c. 1599–1600)
- Pietà (c. 1600)
- The Three Marys at the Tomb (c. 1600)
- Rinaldo and Armida (c. 1601)
- Assumption of the Virgin (Rome; 1600–1601)
- Saint Gregory at Prayer (c. 1600–1602)
- Domine quo vadis? (c. 1602)
- Portable Altarpiece with Pietà and Saints (1603)
- Pietà with Two Angels (c. 1603)
- Sleeping Venus (c. 1603)
- Self-Portrait on an Easel (1603–1604)
- The Martyrdom of St Stephen (c. 1603–1604)
- Portrait of Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1604) (disputed)
- Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
- The Dead Christ Mourned (c. 1604)
- Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
- Danaë (1600–1605)
- Saint Didacus of Alcalá Presenting Juan de Herrera's Son to Christ (c. 1606)
- Pietà with Saint Francis and Saint Mary Magdalene (1602–1607)
- The Loves of the Gods (1608)
- The Birth of the Virgin (1605–1609)