Madona da Humildade

The title names the idea. Instead of raising the Virgin onto a throne, this type of image, called a Madonna of Humility, sets her on a cushion on the bare ground, and Fra Angelico paints her there around 1433 with the Christ child standing on her lap. Fra Angelico was himself a Dominican friar, and the quiet piety is his own. He surrounds her with a few careful signs rather than a crowd, a lily and roses in a vase for purity and motherhood, two angels seated on the floor playing an organ and a lute, three more holding a gold and black cloth of honour behind her. The child leans his forehead against his mother’s cheek. For all the humility of the pose, the gold and the deep colours are as rich as anything in Florence at the time.