The Virgin Mary stands or sits by an open window through which we can see a distant landscape. The Christ Child is cradled in her arms – he has the fingers of one hand in his mouth and clutches at his mother’s veil, which wraps around him, with the other. Two angels peer over the Virgin’s shoulder at the child: the one in the foreground holds a thistle, which was understood as a symbol of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion) on account of its thorns.
This small-scale painting was made for private devotion, and is usually accepted as a late work by Liberale da Verona, made after his return to his native city in 1492 or thereabouts.
The Virgin Mary stands or sits by an open window through which we can see a distant landscape. The Christ Child is cradled in her arms – he has the fingers of one hand in his mouth and clutches at his mother’s veil, which wraps around him, with the other. Two angels peer over the Virgin’s shoulder at the child: the one in the foreground holds a thistle, which was understood as a symbol of the Passion of Christ on account of its thorns.
This small-scale painting was made for private devotion, one of thousands of such images painted in Renaissance Italy. It is usually accepted as a late work by Liberale da Verona, made after his return to his native city in 1492 or thereabouts. A related drawing (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) shows the foremost angel with a musical instrument rather than a flower.
Liberale’s style was heavily indebted to that of Andrea Mantegna. The rather chubby, wide-eyed faces of the Virgin and Christ, the Virgin’s red dress and blue cloak edged with gold embroidery and the way the translucent veil wraps around Christ all hark back to his most important Veronese work, the San Zeno Altarpiece of about 1460.
