Metropolitan Museum Of Art: Madonna And Child

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or MET, is home to a variety of artworks ranging from pre-colonial pieces to contemporary works. Many of the paintings in the MET are lavishly enormous, covering the entirety of walls and ceilings. However, the most expensive piece in the museum is surprisingly a tiny twenty-one by twenty centimeters piece, worth over forty five million dollars.
The Madonna and Child was painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna in 1300 CE with tempera and gold on wood in Italy. In the piece, the Christ looks up at Virgin Mary and pushes her veil out of the way. The Virgin Mary has a “sorrowful expression” because she knows that Christ will be crucified in the future (“Madonna and Child”). The two figures look connected through their …show more content…

The piece is surrounded by a geometric rectangular border, that is sectioned off into smaller squares. Within in the smaller squares, Buoninsegna includes different designs consisting of geometric rhombuses, as well as some curving lines. A halo also surrounds Virgin Mary and Christ, encompassing them individually in an organic circular shape. On the inside of Virgin Mary’s halo, there is a subtle pattern of swirly lines that is repeated around the whole circumference. Christ’s halo is detailed with a pattern of simple …show more content…

The golden stars on Virgin Mary’s robes “refer to the star of Bethlehem that announced the nativity." The star also symbolizes the Virgin Mary, since she was deemed ‘Stella Maris’ or the star of the seas (Dewil). This title is further referenced in Buoninsegna’s Madonna and Child, as the Virgin Mary’s deep blue clothing is very reminiscent of the dark blue waters of the ocean.
This piece was meant to strengthen the relationship between the holy world and the natural world so that people would feel closer to the Virgin Mary and Christ. Duccio created an image that had the ability to make the Virgin Mary and Christ feel like real people, while simultaneously still preserving their divinity. Moreover, by creating a compact painting that could be used to pray in a personal home, this Madonna and Child gave a new meaning to devotional images; no longer did people have to go to church to worship the Virgin Mary and

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