The Virgin and Child

The Virgin, crowned and richly dressed as Queen of Heaven, sits on a marble throne. She comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. A pink watered silk – a cloth of honour of the kind hung behind medieval rulers – hangs in soft folds behind her and creases across the edge of the marble shelf behind her head. In her long, tapering fingers she holds up a translucent cloth on which the Child is seated, as if revealing him to the friars seated in the church. The child himself has slumped forward on his mother’s knee in sleep, his chin resting on her hand, his tiny fingers grasping one of hers. San Domenico was only a small church, and Crivelli’s polyptych must have lit up the nave with a glittering, golden glow.