Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]

Pietro Lorenzetti

National Gallery of Art

Three panels of an altarpiece are each filled by a woman shown from the hips up against a gold background. The central woman, Mary, also holds a baby. Narrow molding affixed to each panel comes to a rounded but pointed arch set under a sharp point at the top. The people all have pale skin tinged with green or gray, light brown eyes, and their heads are surrounded with disk-like halos. The women also have almond-shaped eyes, long, straight noses, and their bow-shaped lips are closed. In the center, Mary looks at the blond-haired baby she holds. Mary’s head and shoulders are covered by a sapphire-blue mantle over a crimson-red dress. She supports the baby’s bottom with one hand and holds a bunch of red cherries in her other by the child’s hip. The baby’s body is angled toward the woman, and he turns his head back to look over his left shoulder, off to our right. Blond hair curls tightly against his head. Pale pink flushes his cheeks, and his mouth is slightly open. He holds a bunch of three cherries close to his mouth with one hand and reaches toward the fruit the woman holds with the other. He wears a daffodil-yellow garment with a tight bodice, long sleeves, and fabric loosely draped over his legs to show the toes of one bare foot. A swath of fabric flutters from his left shoulder, to our right, like a pennant in a breeze. In the space between the pointed arch and the pointy top of the panel, a man with a honey-brown beard and hair surrounded by a gold halo holds up his right hand with the index and middle fingers raised. Shown from the waist up, he wears an ultramarine-blue tunic with a rose-pink robe, and he looks off to our right. In the panel to our left, the woman holds an ivory-white, cylindrical jar and wears a tomato-red mantle that covers her head and drapes down past her shoulders and over her matching dress. Locks of blond hair show under the mantle on the sides of her face. Bands of geometric designs made with black lines decorate the edges of her mantle and the neckline of her dress. The woman holds her left hand under the jar and her right hand holds onto its peaked lid. In the panel to our right, the woman wears a crown and braces a wooden wheel under one elbow. Her dress and cloak have gold leafy patterns against ivory white, and are edged with brick red. She wraps the cloak around her left elbow, to our right, and grips the fabric in that hand. She holds a palm frond with the hand draped on the wheel. An angel occupies the areas between the rounded arches and pointed tops of both flanking panels. Both angels have yellow wings and blond hair, wear red robes with yellow cloaks, and hold palm fronds. The bodies face us but both look in toward the center so we see the angels almost in profile. The surface of all three panels are cracked and chipped, especially in the gold areas.