Madonna and Child

The format and modest size of this painting indicate that it was made for personal devotion, probably to be displayed in a domestic setting. Though debates persist about whether or not the work was actually painted by Paolo Uccello, we can be fairly certain that it was produced in his workshop, since certain elements, such as the Virgin’s hands, closely resemble those in other works by him, suggesting the reuse of workshop cartoons.

The landscape behind the Virgin Mary and the Christ child also responds to the pictorial vocabulary of Paolo Uccello, with the geometrical divisions of the fields and the evenly-spaced trees dotted in the distance creating an almost abstract effect. Against this backdrop, the figures have an imposing three-dimensionality, typical of Uccello’s autograph depictions of this subject. In contrast though to many earlier works by Uccello, the artist of this panel made no attempt to use the halo as a means of showing skilled perspectival illusionism. Both the Virgin’s and Christ’s haloes appear to be flat against the picture plane.

Uccello’s daughter, Antonia, and his son, Donato, were trained as painters in their father’s workshop. It is possible one of them painted this work, under their father’s supervision.