Madonna des Tierkreises

Look past the Madonna and Child to the gold behind them, and you can still make out the faint outlines of the zodiac, the ram, the fish, the archer, though time has rubbed most of them away. That is where the picture gets its name. Cosme Tura, the leading painter at the court of Ferrara in the 1450s, set the signs of the heavens around the Virgin to cast the Christ child as the lord of cosmic time, the one who governs the turning year. Two bunches of grapes hang at the sides with goldfinches pecking at them, both old signs pointing to Christ's later sacrifice. Tura worked in a hard, wiry, almost metallic line that makes his figures look carved rather than soft.