Madonna and Child with Angels

Johann Carl Loth · c. 1700

Medium

Pen and brown ink, heightened with white gouache, on gray laid paper with blue fibers, laid down on ivory laid card

Original size

21.9 × 18 cm (8 5/8 × 7 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Madonna and Child with Angels radiates a tender intimacy that feels more like a private devotion than a public commission — the soft interplay of line and light drawing the eye inward toward the central figures. Johann Carl Loth was a German-born painter who spent the heart of his career in Venice, absorbing the rich tonal tradition of the Venetian masters and the dramatic contrasts of Caravaggism. Known in Italy as "Carlotto," he became one of the most sought-after painters in late seventeenth-century Venice, celebrated for his warm, candlelit figures and his ability to render flesh and fabric with equal conviction. This work, executed in pen and brown ink heightened with white gouache on gray laid paper, reveals Loth as a draftsman of real sensitivity — the white heightening doing the work that chiaroscuro does in his oils, pulling the Madonna and Child forward from the shadowed ground. Loth's drawings are considerably rarer than his painted output, making this sheet a less familiar but genuinely revealing glimpse into his working process. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the drawing's luminous quality into the richer, more enveloping language of paint — preserving the warmth of the original while giving the composition a physical presence that works beautifully on any wall.