Filippino Lippi and Bernardo & Iacopo di Francesco
Madonna and Child
1492-1502
Stained glass
Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
In other images the child is often pictured reaching for things that would engage a small child's interest, such as a bird or a fruit. That trope serves to emphasize the child's humanness, but in this case the effect is reduced by making a mappa mundi orb the object of his interest.
In other respects the treatment is conventional. The Virgin Mary has her red robe and blue mantle, and the child sits/squirms on her left knee. She is flanked by two small figures, one praying and the other reading. Are they the donors?
This is the upper half of
a single window in the chapel. The motto above the Madonna reads mitis esto, "be mild," a phrase appropriate to the lamb at the top.
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Read more about the Madonna and Child.
Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
