The Virgin of Humility Nursing the Child

The Virgin sits on the ground, on a red cloth, instead of on a throne. Painters called this type the Madonna of Humility, after the Latin humilis, low, close to the earth, and it spread through Italian painting in the 14th century, often with the Virgin nursing the Child, as here. The Louvre gives the panel to Lorenzo Monaco's workshop. It came from the huge collection of the Marquis Giampietro Campana in Rome, which the French state bought in 1861 after his financial ruin. The catalogues of the next two years called it a work by Orcagna and then school of Giotto. The Gothic frame is not the one the picture was made for. The small God the Father in its gable was painted by another artist, and the coats of arms at the base belong to two Florentine families, the Corsini and the Alberti del Giudice.