The Virgin and Child

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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The Virgin bends over the sleeping Christ Child, the diagonal slope of her body paralleled by that of her son’s. Her lips are parted – perhaps she’s singing her child to sleep. Christ is balanced rather precariously on a red cushion on a parapet. His head rests in his mother’s hand and one arm hangs down limply. His sleep presages his death, and his coral necklace symbolises the blood he will shed during the Passion (his torture and crucifixion).

This is the finest among the surviving small-scale images of the Virgin and Child by Giovanni Santi, father of Raphael. Santi, like other Renaissance artists, often borrowed figures and motifs from other painters. The parapet, cloth of honour and the rich textiles, as well as the landscape with its clumps of spherical trees and distant blue mountains, are all typical of Netherlandish painting.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

The Virgin and Child

Date

perhaps about 1488

Medium

Egg and oil on wood

Measurements

H 68 x W 49.8 cm

Accession number

NG751

Acquisition method

Bought, 1865

Work type

Painting

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Normally on display at

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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