In art, a Madonna is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is from Italian ma donna 'my lady' (archaic). The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the Theotokos of Vladimir, Agiosoritissa, Blachernitissa, etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in Hodegetria, Eleusa, etc.
Pietro Lorenzetti or Pietro Laurati was an Italian painter, active between c. 1306 and 1345. Together with his younger brother Ambrogio, he introduced naturalism into Sienese art. In their artistry and experiments with three-dimensional and spatial arrangements, the brothers foreshadowed the art of the Renaissance.
The Wilton Diptych is a small portable diptych of two hinged panels, painted on both sides, now in the National Gallery, London. It is an extremely rare survival of a late medieval religious panel painting from England. The diptych was painted for King Richard II of England, who is depicted kneeling before the Virgin and Child in what is known as a donor portrait. He is presented to them by the English saints King Edmund the Martyr, King Edward the Confessor and patron saint, John the Baptist. The painting is an outstanding example of the International Gothic style, and the nationality of the unknown artist is probably French or English.
Stefan Lochner was a German painter working in the late International Gothic period. His paintings combine that era's tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Based in Cologne, a commercial and artistic hub of northern Europe, Lochner was one of the most important German painters before Albrecht Dürer. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts, which often feature fanciful and blue-winged angels. Today some thirty-seven individual panels are attributed to him with confidence.
The Beaune Altarpiece is a large polyptych c. 1445–1450 altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden, painted in oil on oak panels with parts later transferred to canvas. It consists of fifteen paintings on nine panels, of which six are painted on both sides. Unusually for the period, it retains some of its original frames.
The Last Judgment is a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, created after 1482.
Lorenzo di Bicci was an Italian painter of the Florentine School considered to be one of the most important painters in Florence during the second half of the 14th century. He is believed to have learned his trade from his father, about whom little is known. Lorenzo’s style, as well as that of his contemporaries Jacopo di Cione and Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, was influenced by the artist Andrea di Cione. Lorenzo's paintings made use of bright colors and his compositions avoided complexity. The figures he painted tended to have round faces and were often expressionless. Another one of Lorenzo's distinctive characteristics was his precision of execution. He was known for exceptional talent in drawing, an ability that he put to use at the initial stages of his painting. Unlike many celebrated Florentine artists of this period, Lorenzo mostly received commissions from the country clergy and from the lower-middle-class Florentine guilds. His successors, Bicci di Lorenzo and Neri di Bicci, continued to serve these groups.
The Nativity of Jesus has been a major subject of Christian art since the 4th century.
The Master of the Morrison Triptych is the name given to an unknown Early Netherlandish painter active in Antwerp around 1500-1510. He is named for the Morrison Triptych, now in Toledo, Ohio, United States, which is described below.
Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols.
Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–1440, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon. Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life. In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Like other Byzantine depictions of the Madonna, van Eyck depicts a monumental Mary, unrealistically large compared to her surroundings. The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral's windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary's virginal purity and God's ethereal presence.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned is a small oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1433, usually attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden. It is closely related to his Madonna Standing, completed during the same period. The panel is filled with Christian iconography, including representations of prophets, the Annunciation, Christ's infancy and resurrection, and Mary's Coronation. It is generally accepted as the earliest extant work by van der Weyden, one of three works attributed to him of the Virgin and Child enclosed in a niche on an exterior wall of a Gothic church. The panel is housed in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
The St John Altarpiece is a large oil-on-oak hinged-triptych altarpiece completed around 1479 by the Early Netherlandish master painter Hans Memling. It was commissioned in the mid-1470s in Bruges for the Old St. John's Hospital (Sint-Janshospitaal) during the building of a new apse. It is signed and dated 1479 on the original frame – its date of installation – and is today still at the hospital in the Memling museum.
The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. The painting was executed in the 1480s and was transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928; it is today held in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Madonna of the Rose Bower is a panel painting by the German artist Stefan Lochner, usually dated c. 1440–1442, although some art historians believe it contemporaneous with his later Dombild Altarpiece. It is usually seen as one of his finest and most closely detailed works.
The Saint Columba Altarpiece is a large c. 1450–1455 oil-on-oak wood panel altarpiece by Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden painted during his late period. It was commissioned for the church of St. Columba in Cologne, and is now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
Last Judgement is a c. 1435 tempera-on-oak polyptych by the German artist Stefan Lochner, probably commissioned for the council chamber of City Hall of Cologne, but now broken apart. Today the outer wings, which formed a sixfold partition when extended, have been sawed off into twelve individual pictures, most of which are still extant but held in separate collections, mostly in Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt. The interior wings included the Martyrdom of the Apostles, the exterior panels comprised in part of the Saint Anthony Abbot, Mary Magdalene and a Donor, Saints Catherine, Hubert, Quirinus of Neuss, and a Donor, and Pope Cornelius. Its depiction of the Last Judgment follows many of the conventions of contemporary doom paintings, but Lochner introduces important innovations, especially in his rendering of the angel's black and flowing clothes.
Annunciation is a panel painting by the German artist Stefan Lochner, from c. 1446-1449. The panels were probably conceived as an outer wing for a lost altarpiece. It shows the virgin, rather conventionally receiving the voice of the Holy Spirit, who hovers above her in the form of a dove. A vase behind her holds a lily. Her white clothes and the flower represent her virginity. It seems influenced by similar panels found in Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece.
The Adoration of the Magi Altarpiece is a painted triptych by the German artist Stefan Lochner, created c. 1440–1442. Originally painted for the council-chapel St. Maria in Jerusalem in Cologne, it was moved to Cologne Cathedral in 1810 and is now in that church's Marienkapelle, south of the choir. It is also known as the Three Kings Altarpiece (Dreikönigsaltar) and the Patron Saints of Cologne Altarpiece.
Madonna of the Rose Bower is a monumental 1473 panel painting by the German artist, Martin Schongauer, depicting Mary and Christ Child in a hortus conclusus, surrounded by roses and finches. The painting is kept in the former Dominican Church of Colmar in Alsace, a large Gothic church formerly of the Dominican Order, built in the 13th and 14th century. It is classified as a Monument historique, as an object, by the French Ministry of Culture since 1978.
