Jan van Scorel was born in the Dutch village of Scorel. He began to paint after meeting artist Jan Gossaert. At the age of 25, together with a group of Dutch pilgrims, Scorel travelled to Palestine, where he painted pictures on religious subjects. His route passed through Italy, where he returned on his way back to study classic art.

Later, the artist settled in the Dutch city of Utrecht, where he studied poetry and music. During this period, his work was influenced by representatives of the Venetian painting school — Giorgione and Palma Vecchio. They mastered the expressive capacities of oil painting.

The painting Madonna and Child is part of a diptych, its left wing. The right one is in the Berlin-Dahlem Museum Centre in Germany. Art historians believe that the wings ended up in different collections after the 1846 auction. The missing part depicts a middle-aged man with a beard. Researchers of the artist’s work suppose that this is a self-portrait of van Scorel, who at that time was about 35 years old.

The artist began to work on the diptych after his travels across Italy, Palestine and Jerusalem. In the face of Madonna, one can discern the features of his beloved — Agatha van Schoonhoven. Scorel had created her portrait earlier, in 1529.

Madonna and Child is painted in the Romanist style — an eclectic trend in Dutch painting. It combined traditional mythological or religious images with new compositional solutions. In his work, the artist used an imaginary landscape as a background. The architecture behind the characters’ back is typical of ancient southern cities.

Few museums in the world have works by Jan van Scorel in their collections. In 1964, Madonna and Child from the Tambov Picture Gallery participated in the exhibition dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum among other masterpieces of Western European art from the USSR museums.