| Lorenzo Monaco, one of the major Florentine painters around 1400, employs in this panel a rarely used type of image, representing the Madonna and Child placed on a cloud. Wearing a lapis-lazuli cloak, whose softly flowing folds define her figure, the Mother of God floats on a pink cloud before the eyes of the adoring angels who seem to adopt the same position as the viewer. The mother holds her child so closely to her cheek that the two figures seem to merge into one. Here form emphasizes content, the closeness of mother and child. This approach, marked by a fluidity of line, was a pan-European phenomenon in the period around 1400, and is now known as the Soft Style. A comparison of the altarpiece panels with frescos in the Bartolini chapel in Santa Trinità, Florence, suggests that the work in the Princely Collections dates from c. 1420. |
 |
|
|
|
Oil on panel
height 68 cm, width 36 cm
Inv.-No. GE865
Provenance: 1900 acquired by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein from Prof. Constantini in Florence
|
|
|
|
|
