The Marriage of the Virgin

Michelino da Besozzo painted this Marriage of the Virgin around 1430, one of the finest surviving works of the International Gothic style in Lombardy. Michelino was the leading painter in Milan during the early fifteenth century, renowned for his exquisitely refined technique and elegant figure style. His work represents the courtly art of the Visconti court at its most luxurious, with gold ground and elaborate decorative detail that epitomize late medieval splendor.

The tempera and gold on wood demonstrate Michelino's extraordinarily refined miniaturist technique applied to panel painting. The delicate drawing, luminous colors, and lavish gold tooling create a surface of jewel-like richness characteristic of the International Gothic court style at its most sophisticated.