Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and a Donor [obverse]

Andrea di Bartolo

National Gallery of Art

A woman sitting on the floor and cradling a nursing baby in her lap is flanked by two winged angels and a kneeling woman, beneath a bearded man supported on a third angel in this vertical painting. The seated woman, Mary, and the infant, Jesus, have pale, peachy skin, blond hair, and hazel eyes. Mary sits facing us on a long cushion on the floor with her body angled to our right, taking up about half the height of the composition. Her round face is tilted to our right as she gazes up under faint brows. Her marine-blue mantle is trimmed with gold and has a star on her right shoulder, to our left. The mantle covers most of her head and wraps around her tan and bronze-brown robe. The baby swaddled in a rose-pink cloth and reaches for her exposed left breast, which emerges from a place near her shoulder. Jesus lies across a white cloth that also drapes over her left arm. His head is turned slightly away from her breast as he looks up and to our left while his left arm reaches toward the neck of her dress. He has adult-like facial features but a pudgy body, and his ankles are crossed with the toes of his bottom foot flexed. Two winged angels floating to each side are smaller in scale, and are painted entirely in pumpkin orange. They face in toward Mary and Jesus, and wear long, flowing garments. The angel to our left crosses arms over the chest, and the angel to our right holds hands up in prayer. A third orange angel floats above them, seen head-on, gazing down. Above it is the torso of a young man with brown hair and beard, wearing a rose-pink cloak over a peacock-blue robe. He faces us with one hand held up, index and middle finger extended. He holds a closed book the same color blue as his robe in his other hand. Mary, Jesus, the bearded man, and the angels all have halos incised into the gold background, which comes to a point above the bearded man. In the bottom quarter of the painting, the burnt-orange floor is covered with a brocade-like pattern in gold. Set against it in the lower right corner, a woman, much smaller in scale than Mary and Jesus, kneels with her raised hands pressed together as she gazes up at them in profile. She is completely covered by a bone-white, long-sleeved garment, wimple, and long mantle, leaving only her face visible. The inner edges of the panel, including along the pointed top, are punched with floral and geometric patterns. The upper corners of the wooden panel to either side of the point are filled in with gold.