The Madonna and Child with Angels is a painting by the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 painter Masaccio

Masaccio

Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...

, who worked in collaboration with his brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto.

The painting is the central panel of the Pisa Altarpiece, a large multi-paneled altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

 executed for the chapel of St. Julian, owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa

Pisa

Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...

. The painting is in a very damaged state, the altarpiece having been cut up and sold in pieces long ago. Today the panel is smaller than its original state; it has lost perhaps as much as 8 cm. at the bottom and 2-2.5 cm. at each side. Eleven surviving panels of the altarpiece, which is the only documented work by Masaccio, are in various museums. Scholars hypothesize the reconstruction of the altarpiece based on a very complete description by Vasari.

The painting contains six figures: the Madonna and Child and four angels. The Madonna is the centre figure and is larger than any of the others to signify her importance. Christ sits on her knees, eating grapes offered to him by his mother. Although he is an exceedingly babyish baby (in comparison to the babies of Masaccio's immediate predecessors, like Lorenzo Monaco

Lorenzo Monaco

Lorenzo Monaco was an Italian painter of the late Gothic-early Renaissance age.-Biography:...

 or Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile da Fabriano was an Italian painter known for his participation in the International Gothic style. He worked in various places in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany. His best known works are his Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt.-Biography:Gentile was born in or near Fabriano,...

), the grapes are a symbol of his blood - like the red wine of Communion - which indicates Christ's awareness of his eventual death. The Madonna looks sorrowfully at her child, as she also realises his fate.
Originally a panel of the Crucifixion

Crucifixion (Masaccio)

Crucifixion is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio.A chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa commissioned an altarpiece from Masaccio on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year...

stood above this painting, underlining the sacrificial (Eucharistic) nature of the image.
In many ways the style of the painting is traditional; the expensive gold background and ultramarine draperies of the Virgin, her enlarged scale, and her hierarchical presentation (ceremoniously enthroned) all fit within the late-medieval formulas for the representation of Mary and Jesus in glory. In other ways, however, the painting is a step away from International Gothic in the sense that Masaccio has created a more realistic approach to the subject:

• The faces are more realistic and not idealised.
• The baby Jesus is less of a small man and more child-like.
• An attempt at creating depth has been attempted by Massacio's placement of the two background angels and through the use of linear perspective in the throne.
• Modeling is clearly visible as the light source is coming from the left of the painting.
• The Madonna is a bulky figure, deriving from classical models, and her drapery has larger and more naturalistic folds that shape her body.

Masaccio has used linear perspective to create pictorial space; it can be seen on the orthogonal on the cornice of her throne. The vanishing point is at the child's foot. The reason for this is that the work was originally located above a representation of the Adoration of the Magi, in which one of the magi kisses Jesus' foot. Although the paintings are noticeably different (the subjects are clothed differently and on different chairs) the Madonna is more or less in the same position in both works. This parallelism is designed to make viewers have the same attitude as the magus when looking at the Madonna and Child. They are imagined to be kneeling in front of Mary, and could easily lean forward to kiss the foot of Jesus.

Masaccio has also used the overlapping of figures and objects to create pictorial space, like the two angels in the foreground overlapping the throne and the throne overlapping the two angels in the background.