Madonna of Humility with Adoring Angels

Agnolo Gaddi, son and pupil of the great Taddeo Gaddi, was the last major painter of the Giottesque tradition in Florence. This Madonna of Humility with Adoring Angels, painted around 1390 and now in the Courtauld Gallery, depicts the Virgin seated on the ground rather than enthroned — an iconographic type that became enormously popular in late fourteenth-century Italy as an expression of Marian devotion emphasizing the Virgin's accessibility and meekness.

Tempera and gold on panel. Gaddi renders the figures with soft, rounded modeling derived from the Giottesque tradition, surrounding the Virgin with a luminous gold ground and delicately tooled haloes that catch and reflect light.