Madonna and Child with six Angels by Sandro Botticelli

This sumptuous tondo-shaped composition, temporarily titled “Madonna and Child with six Angels”, is a devotional creation of rare elegance signed by the famous Italian master Botticelli Sandro. Created at the heart of the Florentine Renaissance, this sacred painting reflects the taste for Marian devotion and purity of lines. Through this celestial gathering of the Virgin and an angelic court, the artist expresses intense spiritual devotion and perfect geometric harmony.

At the center of a perfect circular format, the Virgin Mary stands in a three-quarter view, tilting her melancholic face toward the infant Jesus whom she supports with tenderness. She is draped in a sumptuous night-blue mantle adorned with a golden star on her shoulder, over a pleated red dress, with her head wrapped in a transparent veil. The Child, vigorous and moving, reaches his chubby arms toward her in a gesture of pure affection. Around this central group, eight angels with fine, curly-haired faces crowd in a symmetrical semicircle, holding tall stems of white lilies in bloom that rise toward the sky. Some angels look toward the viewer with devotion, while others sing while holding open hymnals. A gentle light bathes the scene, making the golden halos of the celestial figures shine.

The Florentine master expresses the fullness of his virtuosity here through an extremely sharp contour line and a superb chromatic harmony. His delicate treatment of the white lilies and the vaporous transparency of the veil testifies to an exceptional craftsmanship and an unequaled poetic realism.