3. Italian Painting (13-18th c.)

This Madonna is a late work by Pesellino; it was painted shortly before his death. The painter placed the group of the mother and child in front of an ambitiously painted Renaissance red marble niche. The strong light coming from the left accentuates the depth of the architectural background and throws into relief the bodies painted with anatomical accuracy. The refined elegance of the representation, and some motifs – like the veils light as air or the gold-speckled halos shown as discs of rock crystal – derive from Filippo Lippi’s art. Pesellino’s sorrowful-looking Madonnas were very popular already in his time. An autograph version of this picture is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and it is also known in several copies. In Florence, an entire workshop specialized in copying Lippi’s and Pesellino’s Madonnas for several decades.