Madonna with Child

Watch how the Virgin and Child press cheek to cheek, trading glances and a small smile. Berruguete did not invent the pose. He took it from a terracotta relief Donatello had modelled some 80 years earlier, around 1430, a work already well known in Florence when this young Spaniard arrived about 1510. He turns the old carving back into flesh, softening it with the smoky light he picked up from Leonardo while keeping the heavy, sculptural bodies of Michelangelo. A rock wall closes the scene on the left, and on the right a spring landscape opens out, scattered with little trees and low hills. For decades the panel hung under bigger Florentine names, Andrea del Sarto and Rosso Fiorentino, until Luisa Becherucci gave it back to Berruguete in 1953. He was one of a handful of Spaniards learning the new style here, in Andrea del Sarto's own city.