Madonna and Child

Pietro Lombardo (or Pietro di Martino da Carona) Italian

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 504

This relief was intended as a devotional image for a private chapel, shrine, or well-to-do home. Mary protectively embraces the Christ Child whose slumber symbolically foreshadows his death, as does the leafy fruit in his hand that resembles the apple held by Adam nearby. The sharp contours of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ are defined by undercutting, and crisp folds of drapery envelop mother and son, their intimacy emphasized by the delicate linearity with which they are carved. The band of stylized vegetation below is inspired by ancient decorative motfis.

[Peter J. Bell, 2015]

Madonna and Child, Pietro Lombardo (or Pietro di Martino da Carona) (Italian, Carona, Lombardy ca. 1435–1515 Venice), Relief: stone, traces of gilding; Frame: stone painted blue and gilded in parts, Italian, Venice

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