Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]

_Pietro Lorenzetti of Siena painted me in 1340_. This inscription is the signature of the Sienese painter Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345), which survives on a fragment of the original frame (now incorporated in a modern support and located beneath this painting). While Pietro and his brother Ambrogio are often noted for the inventive ways in which they defined three-dimensional space and incorporated details from everyday life to expand the realism of their figures and settings, they also painted icon-like devotional pictures, such as this one. During this period, Pietro seems to have been especially influenced by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), as seen in the quiet solemnity of the composition, in which massive figures fill nearly the entire panel, along with the simple, pointed arch of the panel itself. The figures’ clothing also typifies Giotto's style: heavy fabrics fall perpendicularly in a few simplified or pointed folds_ _to emphasize the figures' solidity.

The central group of the Madonna and Child proposes an unusual variant of the _Hodegetria_ Madonna type, which can be found in a number of the Gallery's paintings from this period (the Byzantine _Enthroned Madonna and Child_ and Lippo Memmi��s _Madonna and Child with Donor_ are just two). The Christ child is supported on his mother’s left arm and looks directly at the observer, but Mary does not point to her son with her right hand, as is typical, and instead offers him cherries. It is thought that this painting may have been commissioned for a church not in Siena but in Pisa, where apparently the motif of the Christ child eating cherries was then popular.