Madonna col Bambino

Masaccio painted this in 1426 as the center of an altarpiece for a chapel in Pisa, and he was doing something new. The angels' lutes are angled to converge on a single vanishing point, the young discovery of one-point perspective that painters in Florence were just then working out. The Virgin sits solid as a piece of carved stone and casts a real shadow against her throne. The Christ child reaches for grapes and puts them in his mouth, an old sign of the wine of the Mass. Masaccio would be dead within two years, at 26 or 27. The altarpiece was taken apart in the 18th century, and this battered central panel is one of only about 11 pieces ever found again.