Quinten Massys, The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Four Angels

This painting shows the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven: she sits on on a gilded throne and two angels hover above her, about to place an extraordinarily delicate crown on her head. The throne is decorated with red and green enamel or glass, and rests on the dais of a small Gothic church.

The Virgin is richly dressed, in a purple-red mantle, edged with gold embroidery and rows of pearls, and a blue dress lined with grey fur. The infant Christ, a string of coral beads around his neck, plays with the book held by his mother, pulling on the red book mark. The pair are serenaded by angels who stand to either side of the throne playing a lute and a harp. The luxurious carpet – an item of very great value in northern Europe in the sixteenth-century – is probably based on a real rug. Look closely and you can see how the artist has suggested ​its texture: the pattern is rendered in darker colours, ​with small dots modelled in lighter hues to indicate the texture ​of the knots. Parts of the design are Turkish, but the curving outer border is of a type not found in Turkish carpets: it is more Persian in style. It maybe from a region of eastern Turkey or western Iran.

Quinten Massys knew a great deal about fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting. The composition, particularly the two musical angels, refers back to the much-copied Virgin and Child in an Apse with Two Angels - there is a version in our collection - while Christ playing with his mother’s book and the flying angels are reminiscent of another much-copied image, Duran Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden.

At first glance it seems that Massys has created an illusion of space and symmetry, but on closer inspection you can see that both are subtly distorted. The figures are all on different scales: the Virgin is massive and evidently intended to dominate the tiny church, while the flying angels are not much bigger than Christ. The central vertical axis lies between the Virgin’s eyes, but the church is left of centre, while the dais and throne are right. The carpet, a visually important item, is not central on the dais, the flying angels are shifted to the right and the standing angels are not in the same plane. The overall impact is both disturbing and fascinating, and the strange broken colours enhance the impression of mystery. The painter seems to have been keen to create a devotional work of great complexity that would encourage careful and repeated viewing.

The rather solemn Christ Child may have a more serious task than apparently playing with the bookmark: he is perhaps reading and marking the Old Testament prophecies which will determine his fate. His bookish interests may perhaps have appealed to two of the painting’s former owners, both noted book collectors: the Revd Walter Sneyd (who died in 1888) of Keele Hall, Staffordshire, and Charles Dyson Perrins (who died in 1958), whose fortune came from Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. The painting is generally in good condition, although the red lake glazes on the Virgin’s mantle have faded unevenly.