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Rossellino, Madonna and Child with Angels

Met curator Luke Syson on faith in Antonio Rossellino’s Madonna and Child with Angels, c. 1455–60.

Antonio Rossellino was among the most gifted sculptors of his generation, and his reliefs of the Virgin and Child are justly celebrated. This example, carved from mottled brown marble about 1455–60, is particularly successful. The Virgin sits on an elaborate throne, with scrolled armrests projecting in high relief. Both she and the Christ Child in her arms seem strangely subdued, perhaps contemplating Christ's future suffering. The protective, caressing gesture of the Virgin's left hand is especially poignant.

The surface is richly contoured and decorated, and the concern for finish extends to the background, which is enlivened by the heads and feathery wings of seraphim. Typical of painters of the period is the sculptor's attention to ornamental detail: the fringe of the Virgin's mantle, the haloes, and the strands of hair of both Virgin and Child are delicately highlighted with touches of gilding.

View this work on metmuseum.org.

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Created by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user Миленa
    - "Something which is profoundly beautiful on a human level has the capacity to transport beyond daily experience."

    Abbe Suger, the developer of Gothic Architecture with its elegant arches and stained-glass windows, would certainly agree. He once wrote: "The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material." I love how this video echoes Suger's sentiment. :)
    (4 votes)
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Video transcript

I was brought up in a fairly irreligious household. In fact, it was fairly suspicious of practiced religion. And so for many, many years I worked almost entirely on secular works of art. And then I started thinking about this relief and I realized that my fundamental views on religion and faith were being challenged. This has always seemed to me to be a very felt piece. The expression of the Madonna first with her gentle melancholy, a sense that she knows what will happen to her son. And then the baby’s expression, which is so brilliantly observed. He’s holding whatever it was that he once had in his hand at just exactly the distance you would expect a baby to hold something from its eye while it’s just trying to focus. You know, when it’s that age— her tenderness, his wriggling inquisitiveness—makes them exactly as they should be, human. The thing that’s startling is realizing that you’ve come to believe so completely in this image, that the lack of color is something you almost cease to notice. This work makes me remember that Christ and the Virgin are both, as it were, spirit and flesh. The very nature of sculptural relief is that bridge between something that is there with you, something that is three-dimensionally present, and something which is like a window on another world. It moves very subtly and very elegantly between something which is touchable and tangible, like the chubby fleshiness of Christ’s arm, like the slightly more bony, protective hand of the Virgin, to other areas which are incredibly shallow, like this swirling snowstorm of seraphim that cushion and protect the two figures like clouds. So after looking at this piece over the years, it hasn’t made me into a Christian, but I’ve come to realize that there’s a very profound difference between practiced religion and faith. Something which is profoundly beautiful on a human level has the capacity to transport beyond daily experience.