Description
Pietro Lorenzetti places the Virgin and Child upon a wooden throne, while two red-winged angels appear in the upper corners. Mary is wrapped in a pale mantle densely patterned with delicate dark designs. The Child, dressed in red, turns on her knees and looks downward. At the foot of the throne, a friar wearing a dark habit kneels with his hands joined in prayer. His much smaller scale identifies him as a donor and expresses humility before the sacred figures.
Painted around 1319, the panel originally occupied the centre of a larger altarpiece whose other parts have been separated or lost. The gold background belongs to Sienese tradition, yet the Child’s turning body, the substantial throne and the angels leaning against the frame reveal Lorenzetti’s interest in persuasive space and physical presence. Now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the painting yielded fragments of the artist’s signature during conservation, providing important evidence of its authorship.
