Collections / Explore the Collection
Today at the Museum

May 23, 2013

Thinking Globally: Exploring the MIA's Indian and Southeast Asian Art Collection

7 – 8 p.m.
Pillsbury Auditorium

Presenter: Risha Lee, the MIA's Jane Emison Assistant Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art. The MIA's Indian and Southeast Asian art collection contains many gems of art, produced in a variety of times and places. In an introduction to the collecti...

Immaculate Madonna
Title:Immaculate Madonna
Artist:Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli
Date:c.1710
Creation Place:Europe, Italy
Credit Line:The Driscoll Art Accessions Endowment Fund
Accession Number:2010.77
Ponsonelli was the foremost sculptor active in Genoa in the first third of the 1700s. He worked for patrons all over Europe, and according to written sources he even sent sculptures to Latin America. This sculpture is his only work in an American museum. In order to accentuate the supernatural vision of the Immaculate Madonna standing on clouds, on the crescent moon and a dragon (symbol of the defeated sins), the Virgin's clothes are shown in tumultuous movement, darting off in different directions with speedy lines. The energetic and abstract drapery movement was a characteristic of Baroque painting in Genoa as well. Ponsonelli masterfully pushes the divine tornado of textiles into the third dimension, and takes it to new extremes.