Madonna between Two Saints

Madonna between Two Saints is an 1521 oil on panel painting by Rosso Fiorentino, also known as the Villamagna Altarpiece. It was made for the parish church of Villamagna, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and Saint Felicity, and stayed there until the mid-1860s, when it moved to the Diocesan Museum in Volterra. It was the artist's second commission in Volterra after the Deposition, and he signed and dated it in the lower left corner.

The composition is simple and symmetrical, drawing on fifteenth-century Florentine practice. The Virgin sits holding the Christ Child, who clings to her neck, her knee thrust forward. John the Baptist stands on one side in his camel-skin tunic, holding a cross, while Saint Bartholomew on the other holds an open book and the knife with which he was flayed. Compared with the earlier Spedalingo Altarpiece and the later Dei Altarpiece, this work favours a more restrained arrangement. The background, the Virgin's pose and the saint with the open book recall Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies, showing the artist's engagement with contemporary Florentine painting.

Painter

Rosso Fiorentino

Date

1521

Medium

oil paint, panel

Dimensions

169 × 133 cm

Museum

Diocesan Museum in Volterra, Volterra

Genre

religious art

Depicts

sitting, hermit, standing, crucifix, platform, boy, knife, Mary

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