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©
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Bernardino Butinone

The Nativity

1493
Tempera and oil on panel.
46 x 97 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Inv. no.
72
(
1977.45
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
Bernardino Butinone, a painter of the Lombard School, is documented from 1484 in Milan, the city where a number of his works have survived. His first known paintings date from the 1480s and reveal the influence of Andrea Mantegna, Francesco del Cossa, Cosmè Tura and Vincenzo Foppa. In 1485 Butinone began to collaborate with the painter Bernardo Zenale, and together they produced a series of frescoes for civil and religious buildings as well as altars for monasteries and churches.

The present panel was acquired in 1977 on the Italian art market. Prior to that it was in a private collection in Italy. Before its acquisition in May 1977 it was shown on request to Rodolfo Pallucchini who considered it to be of great interest to Lombard art and a reference point for an individual study of the works of Bernardo Zenale and Bernardino Butinone. Pallucchini considered this panel close to the work of the two painters for the church of San Martino in Treviglio.

Butinone set the Holy Family against a dark, rocky mass against which the figures stand out brightly for their intense colouring and bright illumination. The naked Christ Child, who is seated in an unstable pose on a rocky bed has a kneeling angel on one side, richly dressed in clothes that provide a visual counterpoint. The landscape, divided by the central motif, is given great emphasis in this work. On the left we see the Annunciation to the Shepherds, which takes place against mountains on the edge of a tree-lined path. On the right the view changes and the path and mountains are transformed into a city with buildings. Pallucchini detected Butinone’s interest in Leonardo da Vinci in the tonal landscape, the angel and the innovations introduced by Leonardo into The Virgin of the Rocks (Musée du Louvre, Paris) of 1483.

This panel has been dated to the 1490s, the decade in which Butinone was working with Zenale on the frescoes of the life of Saint Ambrose for the Griffi chapel in San Pietro in Gessate, Milan. Also from this period is the triptych in the Borromeo collection in which the Virgin and Child with angels are framed by two saints. Also from this productive decade is a series of panels on the life and passion of Christ, which were formerly part of altarpieces and are now divided between various museums and collections. The landscape format of the present panel has led to the suggestion that it was part of a predella of a polyptych whose other panels remain to be identified.

Mar Borobia
15th Century15th Century - Italian paintingPaintingTempera and oilpanel
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The Nativity. La Natividad, 1493
The Nativity
Bernardino Butinone

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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The Nativity. La Natividad, 1493
The Nativity
Bernardino Butinone

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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