The Madonna of the Stars

Jacopo Tintoretto and Workshop

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a seated woman is surrounded by an arch of disembodied, winged baby heads as she gazes down at an infant lying across her lap in this vertical painting. They all have pale, peachy skin, and are placed against a honey-gold background. The floating heads are all angled inward to face the woman. The woman sits on straw-yellow clouds that billow up from the lower right corner, and more clouds fill the upper corners around the floating heads. The woman and baby take up most of the canvas. The woman’s knees are angled to our left but her upper body turns to us. Her hands are together, fingertips touching and coming toward us. Her chestnut-brown hair is pulled back and gathered at the back of her head, and is covered by a translucent white veil that falls to her shoulders. Her shoulders and upper arms are wrapped in an ivory-white shawl over a fawn-brown dress with rose-pink sleeves. Pale yellow stars create a ring around her head, which tilts down as she gazes toward the child with large brown eyes. The plump baby lies on his back, with his head resting on the woman’s right leg, farther from us. He has short, brown hair with dark eyes looking straight up. The white cloth on which he lies wraps around his midsection and upper thighs. One hand rests on his belly and the other by his side, and his chubby knees are bent over the woman’s leg.