Madonna and Child with Angels

Around 1410 Gentile da Fabriano was in Venice, at work with the younger Pisanello on frescoes for the Doge's Palace that later burned and vanished. This small panel is one of the few things from those years to survive him, and it survives badly damaged, its gold ground rubbed and its surface worn. Look past that to the child. The soft turn of his body, the plants creeping over the Virgin's throne, the careful fall of the drapery — this delicate naturalism was startling for its date, a generation before the painters usually credited with it. The little angels in front hold a scroll inscribed with an Easter chant to the Virgin. It may once have been the center of a larger altarpiece.