Small ancona with a Madonna of Humility and the Agnus Dei

This exquisite artefact is of a fairly rare type of gold glasswork known as “vetri a oro”, with sgraffito gold-leaf images applied to small sheets of crystal, in this case on a red lacquer background framed by a silver-leaf border. It is the work of the Marche-born Lorenzo Salimbeni who, together with Gentile da Fabriano, was one of the great exponents of the International Gothic style in Italy. The imagery of the Madonna of Humility, which was popular in the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth, shows the Virgin seated on the ground, symbolising humilitas, a Christian and, quintessentially, Marian virtue.