Virgin and Child

The Madonna of Humility was a type of image first made in Siena in the 14th century. Mary sits low, on the ground or a cushion, where earlier painters had put her on a throne, and the name comes from that closeness to the earth. Masolino stacks a second idea on top of it. God the Father leans out at the top, the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers just below, and under the dove Mary is nursing the Child. The museum reads that line as the Trinity, set against the feeding mother to show Christ as both true God and true man. The baby has real weight, a solid, almost sculpted body, while the gold ground and Mary's softly flowing robes keep to the older Gothic manner.

The date is less certain than the picture looks. The museum says around 1435. Others have placed it in the 1420s, near his Madonna in Bremen dated 1423. And an old photograph from the days of the royal gallery in Munich labels it simply Florentine, around 1440, with no painter's name at all.