Madonna and Child with Saint Martina and Saint Agnes

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

National Gallery of Art

A woman and the baby she holds float in a cloud flanked by two winged angels, as two women stand below in this tall, vertical painting. All the people have pale skin shaded with smoke gray, and their necks, fingers, and limbs are elongated. At the top center of the painting Mary holds Jesus on her lap. Jesus is nude except for a white cloth wrapped around his middle. His body faces us as he looks off to our left. He has blond, curly hair and the pudgy features of a baby. He grasps the forefinger of Mary’s right hand, to our left, and his other hand rests by his side. Mary looks down at the baby with her head tilted to our right. One hand reaches around Jesus’s torso and the other arm is lifted, so he can hold her finger. She wears a white veil draped over chestnut-brown hair and a sapphire-blue cloak over a voluminous, rose-pink dress. A winged angel looks on to each side of this pair. Both angels have blond hair and delicate features. The angel to our left wears a parakeet-green robe and has ice-blue wings. That angel crosses arms over the chest, as the angel to our right holds hands together in prayer. The second angel wears shell white and has silvery-gray wings. Both are seen from the chest up from behind puffy, pale blue clouds. Above the angels, rows of ghostly winged baby heads are loosely painted with tones of ivory white and slate gray. They frame a golden glow that surrounds Mary’s head. At Mary’s feet are five more winged baby heads. In the bottom third of the painting, two women stand with their bodies facing inward, toward each other. They both have honey-brown hair, snub noses, and pointed chins. The woman to our left looks up at Mary with large, glistening eyes, her pale pink lips parted. She wears a canary-yellow robe over a topaz-blue, long-sleeved garment. One hand curves over the head of a lion standing in front of her, holding one end of a long palm frond that rests on her right shoulder, closer to us. Two curling lines on the lion’s forehead are the cursive Greek letters for Delta and Theta, which are the artist’s initials. The woman to our right looks down so we see her in profile. A gossamer-white veil covers her hair and drapes across her chest. She is enveloped in a shimmering, flame-red cloak. A white lamb lies across the woman’s left forearm, closer to us, and the woman holds her other hand up to her chest.