Madonna of the Quail

Around 1420 Pisanello was a young painter working in the orbit of Gentile da Fabriano, the leading master of the ornate, gold-drenched style we now call International Gothic. This small panel belongs entirely to that world. The Madonna sits crowned by two flying angels in a walled rose garden, against a background of tooled gold, everything rendered with a jeweller's patience. Look low, at her feet, and you find the bird that gives the picture its name, a quail, painted from close observation and long read as a symbol of the Eucharist. Around this same time Pisanello was also beginning to draw animals from life, a habit that would make him famous.