The ''Madonna of the Rose Garden'' is a

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. Tempera also refers to the paintings done ...

on panel painting (124x64 cm) made by

Sandro Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian Renaissance painting, Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th cent ...

, whose date of between 1469 and 1470 makes it one of his earliest paintings. It is now in the

Uffizi Gallery The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

, Italy.

History

The work was in the Chamber of Commerce of

which leads to the hypothesis that like Botticelli's earlier painting, the '' Madonna della loggia'', it had been commissioned either by the Wool Guild or the Tribunale della Mercanzia.

Wilhelm von Bode Wilhelm von Bode (10 December 1845 – 1 March 1929) was a German art historian and museum curator. Born Arnold Wilhelm Bode in Calvörde, he was ennobled in 1913. He was the creator and first curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, now c ...

was the first to date the work to the artist's juvenile phase, in particular to the period of

Verrocchio Andrea del Verrocchio (, , ; – 1488), born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was a sculptor, Italian painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence. He apparently became known as ''Verrocchio'' after the ...

, 1469–1470, which has since been confirmed by other scholars.

Description and style

The

Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

, with a pensive attitude, is holding the Christ Child on her knees beneath a

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

with columns supporting a semicircular arch with a

coffer A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also ...

ed ceiling, framing the head of the Virgin and following the curved profile of the board. Behind Mary extends a garden with its pink roses dominating the foreground. Below her is a floor with framed marble tiles which demonstrates the painter's mastery of perspective technique. The roses symbolize one of the

titles of Mary Mary, the mother of Jesus in Christianity, is known by many different titles (Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady, Holy Virgin), epithets ( Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven, Cause of Our Joy), invocations (''Panagia'', Mother o ...

, "Mystical Rose". The

pomegranate The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punicoideae, that grows between tall. The pomegranate was originally described throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean re ...

, which Mary holds in her hand and which the Child is tasting, symbolizes fertility, royalty, and with its red color, the blood of the

Passion of Jesus In Christianity, the Passion (from the Latin verb ''patior, passus sum''; "to suffer, bear, endure", from which also "patience, patient", etc.) is the short final period in the life of Jesus Christ. Depending on one's views, the "Passion" m ...

. The work shows incisive use of

chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...

reminiscent of Verrocchio, in whose workshop Botticelli may have trained. The same type of child, with a large oval head and joyful lively expression, can be seen in Verrocchio's sculpture '' Putto con delfino'' from the same period. The figure of Mary is elongated and loosely posed, much more so than in the works of Filippo Lippi, another of the young Botticelli's models. There are some uncertainties in space such as the disproportion of the architectural background which is too small compared to the figure of Mary and also compared to the flowers in the garden behind her.

References

Sources

*Silvia Malaguzzi, ''Botticelli''. Firenze, 2009. English ed. p. 1
Google books
*''L'opera completa del Botticelli'', collana ''Classici dell'arte Rizzoli'', Rizzoli, Milan, 1978. *Bruno Santi, ''Botticelli'', in ''I protagonisti dell'arte italiana'', Scala Group, Florence 2001 *Pierluigi De Vecchi, Elda Cerchiari, ''I tempi dell'arte'', volume 2, Éditions Bompiani, Milan, 1999 *Gloria Fossi, ''Uffizi'', Giunti, Florence, 2004

External links

Official catalogue entry
{{Botticelli Paintings of the Madonna and Child by Sandro Botticelli 1469 paintings

History

Description and style

See also

References

Sources

External links