Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Two Putti (recto); Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and a Putto (verso) by Fra Bartolomeo

Fra Bartolomeo · 1505-01-01

This is a drawing by Fra Bartolomeo, made around 1505. It shows the Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist and two putti, and it lives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the most striking thing about it is the silence that preceded it.

The artist was a successful painter in Florence when the preacher Savonarola upended his life. In 1500, Fra Bartolomeo burned his secular work on a public bonfire and entered the Dominican order. He stopped painting entirely. For four years, he was silent.

When his order finally instructed him to resume work in 1504, something had changed. This drawing belongs to that second beginning. You can see it in the chalk: confident strokes alongside exploratory ones, a hand still remembering and still searching. The Madonna’s face carries no drama, only an inward calm.

What do you notice in the way she holds the child?

Details

He burned his secular paintings and became a Dominican friar.

For four years, Fra Bartolomeo never touched a brush.

Then his order asked him to paint again.

This drawing is what came out of that silence.

Identifiable by his slight lean toward the Christ Child, he gestures upward in adoration , the earliest visual encounter between the two cousins.

Transcript

In 1500, a Florentine painter made a drastic choice. He burned his secular paintings and became a Dominican friar. For four years, Fra Bartolomeo never touched a brush. Then his order asked him to paint again. This drawing is what came out of that silence. Look at the tenderness in her face.