1490
tempera
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Dominant colour
Virgin and Child with Two Angels is a 1490 tempera by Sandro Botticelli, a Early Renaissance work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Two angels pull back a curtain to frame them. Thin trees and what looks like a throne surround the scene. Botticelli painted this in Florence around 1490. It feels quiet and close-up, like a private moment. Jesus lifts his hand in a small blessing gesture. Look next at the Art Institute of Chicago where this hangs.
Sandro Botticelli’s works mark the culmination of a mystical religious tradition in the art of early Renaissance Florence, from the paintings of Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico through those of Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli’s teacher. In this lyrical late work by Botticelli, two angels draw back curtains to reveal the Virgin and Child, who are framed by slender trees in a setting suggesting a throne. The intimate presentation of the holy figures and Christ’s gesture of blessing suggest that this small painting served a private devotional function. This supposition is supported by the choice…
Possibly Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence [Fahy 1969, p. 16 suggested that it might be the painting described by Vasari, “Very beautiful, too, is a little round picture by [Botticelli’s] hand that is seen in the apartment of the Prior of the Angeli in Florence, in which the figures are small but very graceful and wrought with beautiful consideration,” in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, tr. by Gaston Du C. de Vere, New York, 1979, p. 675]. Julius Böhler, Munich [according to a letter from Böhler to Everett Fahy dated January 20, 1969 in curatorial…
The Art Institute of Chicago, Old Masters from the Collection of Cyrus H. McCormick and Max Epstein, July 25–Oct. 1, 1928 (no cat.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Summer Exhibition: Old Masters Lent by Max Epstein, July 24–Oct. 12, 1930 (no cat.). Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, July 1–Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 107.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Sandro Botticelli was a Florentine painter who loved the drama of stories—myths, saints, and ancient tales.
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