Madonna and Child

Workshop of Neroccio de' Landi · c. 1495

Medium

Tempera and gold on stucco

Original size

57.8 × 38.1 × 3.8 cm (22 3/4 × 15 × 1 1/2 in.); With engaged frame: 63.5 × 43.8 × 3.8 cm (25 × 17 1/4 × 1 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This tender devotional panel glows with the refined elegance that defines the finest Sienese painting of the late fifteenth century, its gold ground and softly modelled figures creating an atmosphere of quiet reverence. Neroccio de' Landi was among the most gifted painters working in Siena during a period when that city's artists maintained their own distinct visual language — lyrical, linear, deeply rooted in the Gothic tradition — even as Florence was remaking itself around Renaissance naturalism. Works produced in his workshop followed his characteristic approach closely: delicate facial types with almond-shaped eyes, graceful drapery, and the luminous interaction between tempera pigment and applied gold that gives Sienese devotional images their almost icon-like presence. The use of stucco as a support, rather than the more common wood panel, adds a subtle sculptural quality to the surface. Neroccio himself trained under Vecchietta and worked alongside Francesco di Giorgio Martini, a partnership that shaped his synthesis of painting and sculptural thinking throughout his career. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates this intimate work into a medium that honours its warmth and spiritual stillness, bringing the gilt luminosity and tender humanity of the original into any space that calls for quiet beauty.