Madona das Harpias

Andrea del Sarto signed and dated this altarpiece in 1517, on the pedestal where the Virgin stands, and that pedestal is where its odd nickname comes from. Carved into it are little winged creatures that Vasari, del Sarto's fellow Florentine, took for harpies, and the name stuck. Later scholars looking closely think they are more likely locusts, the swarming creatures from the Book of Revelation, which fits the darker note under this calm scene of the Virgin and Child flanked by two saints. Andrea was working in Florence at the height of what we now call the High Renaissance, in the years when Michelangelo and Raphael had already left the city for Rome. He never had their fame in his own lifetime, and Vasari famously blamed a lack of ambition, yet praised this picture above almost anything else he made. The soft, smoky handling of the light, the way edges melt rather than snap, is exactly what later painters would study him for. It hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.