Why we picked this painting for the cover of WINTER LULLABY
Bernardino Butinone, MADONNA WITH CHILD, 1490, 11″ x 13″ tempera on panel, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy.
To Joël and me, music has always been about bringing people together, exploring commonalities: how the sounds of voices and instruments express the human emotions we all share; how we recognize our own experiences in the stories told by song; how we find our heartbeat in music’s pulse, and how our heartbeat joins there with the heartbeat of others.
We had two goals when we set out to make this Christmas album: to freshly interpret the songs we’d heard and loved since childhood, and to explore more deeply what those songs have to say to us at this time. We’re discovering that within the Christmas story are many stories, both human and divine, that transcend the canon of a particular religion or culture. On some level, there is something here for everyone.
I didn’t have a clear picture of what I was looking for in the search for album artwork. The exploration through hundreds of images of madonna and child—seeing how individual artists interpreted this familiar theme over the centuries—was educational, fascinating, and joyous. In the midst of many masterpieces, this small painting by early Italian Renaissance painter Bernardino Butinone immediately jumped out.
Created around 1490, it is strangely contemporary. No matter where in the world one calls home, this Mary could be the teenaged mother next door. She has been interrupted in her reading (studying?) by the precocious toddler Jesus tugging at her lapel, wanting her attention while smiling mischievously at the viewer. Her gentle half-smile (with a little eye rolling, perhaps?) is patient and resigned, capturing a very human moment every young mother knows well. Skin tones vary from dark to light; culture and ethnicity are ambiguous. This mother and child could be anywhere in the world. They—and their actions captured by the artist at this moment—are universally human.
Information about Butinone is sketchy. Born in Lombardy twenty-odd years before Leonardo da Vinci, he was a successful painter of religious subjects and frescos. His early work showed the more formal influence of classicism; but by mid-career, his paintings had become more original and authentically human, as evidenced by this portrait of mother and child. The humanity of the picture transcends place and time, drawing us into the familiar (from the Latin word familiāris: “of a household”), reminding us that we are all “of a household” on this earth, the human family. These beloved carols do the same; that’s why we still sing them centuries later.
Listen and download WINTER LULLABY: SONGS FOR THE CHRISTMAS CHILD.
Order physical CDs.
