The Expectant Madonna with Saint Joseph

French 15th Century

National Gallery of Art

A kneeling pregnant woman, an older, white-bearded man, a winged angel, and two people smaller in scale are angled to our left in this vertical panel, which has an arched top. All the people have pale skin. The pregnant woman, Mary, takes up most of the composition. She has an oval face with small features, a slight double chin, and pale pink lips. She has long, wavy blond hair under a gold headband, and a ring of Latin text creates a halo farther out from her head. Her midnight blue, almost black, cloak is lined with spring green and edged with gold. She grips the edge of her cloak with her right hand, farther from us, and holds her other hand over her belly. Smaller in scale, the winged angel is behind her and near her right shoulder. The angel holds one of Mary’s fingers and looks back at her face from the corner of light brown eyes. The angel wears a petal-pink robe under gold bands, has blond hair, and wings striped with canary yellow, dark blue, mauve pink, grass green, and pearl white. The man, Joseph, is the same scale as Mary. He is shown from the waist up behind a gold-brocaded red curtain, which is hung across the bottom of the composition behind Mary and the angel. Joseph’s gray hair is covered by a white cloth, and he has a brown and black hood over a raspberry-red robe. He clutches the end of a crutch and a green book in his hands at his chest. The final two people, smaller in scale than the angel, stand or kneel behind Mary. These two women wear gowns that are white down the front with scarlet-red sleeves and skirts. Where it falls down the back of the full dress, the red fabric is also lined with grass green. The gowns are edged with gold and have gold bands down the fronts. The woman closer to us stands with her hand clasped down in front of her, and the other rests one hand on her own belly and the other arm is wrapped around the first woman’s shoulders. Both have blond hair and look up at Mary. Tiny white and blue flowers, including violets, grow on green grass in the bottom quarter of the painting. The background above the curtain is gold, and two winged angels hold a tall crown in a bank of dark blue clouds in the curve of the arch. These angels are painted entirely in shades of crimson red.