Page of Quaratesi Altarpiece: Virgin and Child by GENTILE DA FABRIANO in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

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Quaratesi Altarpiece: Virgin and Child

1425
Egg tempera on poplar, 140 x 83 cm
National Gallery, London

The Quaratesi altarpiece was painted for the high altar of San Niccolo Oltrarno, Florence. Dismembered in the nineteenth century, it originally consisted of the Virgin and Child flanked by Saints Mary Magdalene and Nicholas of Bari on the left, and Saints John the Baptist and George on the right, each on a separate gabled panel. The saints (now in the Uffizi, Florence) stood on a continuous painted pavement, the edges of which are just perceptible on either side of the step of Mary's throne, like figures viewed through the slender columns of an open balcony or loggia. In the same way that Christ with his foreshortened halo leans out of the little roundel in the gable above the Virgin, other figures looked out of roundels above the saints of the main storey. Below, in the predella (now in the Vatican), were lively little scenes of the legendary deeds of Saint Nicholas, titulary saint of the church. All these elements were further harmonised through subtle adjustments of composition and colour. Gentile's sumptuous decorative effects can now best be appreciated in the gold brocade, for the once-brilliant cloth of honour behind the Virgin and Child, painted translucent red over silver leaf and green over gold, has darkened and blotched with age.

Despite its regal magnificence, the central group retains a graceful intimacy. The Virgin, an ideal beauty of her day with fair hair, broad forehead and rosebud mouth, looks out gravely as the Christ Child smiles contentedly, showing his tiny milk teeth. Keeping firm hold of his mother's cloak, he turns from her to the adoring angel, with a daisy - symbol of his innocence, picked in Heaven, the garden of eternal spring - held daintily between his pudgy finger and thumb.