Madonna of Humility

A Madonna of Humility is a technical term. Rather than sit on a throne, Mary sits low, on a cushion, close to the ground. The type came out of Siena in the 14th century and spread through the preaching orders, and Fra Angelico belonged to one of them. He was a Dominican friar, Fra Giovanni to his brothers, working in Florence at the convent of San Marco while Cosimo de' Medici paid for its rebuilding. He painted this around 1440. At 74 centimetres high it is a panel for private devotion, the kind kept in a room rather than set over an altar, with Mary holding a lily and the child standing upright on her lap. It reached the Rijksmuseum in 1923 as a gift, helped along by the Rembrandt Society, which has been buying pictures for Dutch museums since 1883.