Copies of Venetian Renaissance paintings on stringed instruments and the provenance of Giorgione’s Benson Holy Family in Washington

Abstract

Copies of Renaissance paintings on instruments of the violin family are extremely rare. In this article two exceptional examples of this genre are investigated from an art historical perspective for the first time. They are two violoncellos, dated Rome 1778, and 1816, that reproduce the Madonna and Child in Giorgione’s Benson Holy Family in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1497) and the central motif of the Madonna and Child in Albrecht Dürer’s Madonna of the Rosegarlands (1506), National Gallery, Prague. Both these fine instruments are in private collections belonging to distinguished cellists. Since the year it was created Dürer’s Madonna of the Rosegarlands has been one of the mos..