Madonna with child

Around 1435 this panel stood at the centre of an altarpiece for a country church near Florence, painted by a Dominican friar we call Fra Angelico. Florence in those years was inventing a new way of seeing. Brunelleschi's vast dome was rising over the cathedral, and younger painters were learning to build convincing depth onto a flat panel. You can watch the old and the new meet here. The gold behind the Virgin belongs to the medieval altar tradition, timeless and flat, while the marble step beneath her and the soft shadows shaping her face reach toward the solid, believable space the age was after. It is tempera on wood, egg-based paint laid down in fine, patient strokes.