Madonna and Child

after Andrea del Verrocchio

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a woman holds a baby in her lap in front of a clear blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman and baby both have smooth, pale skin with rosy cheeks and flat, disk-like halos at the backs of their heads. The woman’s body is angled to our left, and she looks down and smiles faintly at the baby she holds on her lap. Her blond hair is mostly covered by a gathered and ruffled white headdress. Her forest-green robe is lined with topaz blue, and it falls over her shoulders and across her lap over a ruby-red, long-sleeved dress. The white garment beneath the dress is visible along an open seam down the arm we can see, and the front of the dress is pleated vertically from the high waist. The woman supports the baby’s back with one hand and one of his feet with her other. He has curly blond hair, round cheeks, and delicate features. He reaches for the woman with both chubby hands. A slate-blue cloth drapes over his shoulders and is tied with twisted red fabric. A gray band across the bottom of the panel suggests they sit on the far side of a stone ledge. A ridge of trees along a hill in the deep distance is visible along the left edge of the composition, and the sky above deepens from watery blue along the horizon to azure blue across the top. The surface of the painting is cracked in some areas, especially in the sky.