Virgen con el Niño

This fresco began life not in a gallery but on the wall of a private chapel at the Trebbio castle in the hills east of Florence, painted around 1443 for Andrea de' Pazzi, of the banking family later infamous for their plot against the Medici. Andrea del Castagno set the enthroned Madonna on a floor of coloured marble that recedes convincingly into depth, a young painter showing off the new science of perspective. The two children offering Mary a vase of flowers and a crown of roses are probably little Pazzi themselves. Castagno gives his figures the weight and stillness of carved stone, the mark of a man who had studied Donatello's sculpture closely. In the 19th century the fresco was cut from its wall and moved, and it now hangs among the Uffizi's collections.