Madonna with child

This Madonna with Child by Cimabue, dating to around 1283 and now in the Museum of Santa Verdiana in Castelfiorentino, is one of several devotional panels by the master that survive outside major museum collections. Cimabue, regarded by Dante and Vasari as the father of Italian painting, transformed the Byzantine tradition through his unprecedented attention to naturalistic modeling and emotional expression. This panel, created during the height of Cimabue's career between his work at Assisi and his great Santa Trinita Madonna, demonstrates his influence extending to smaller Tuscan towns.

Executed in tempera and gold on panel, the painting shows Cimabue's characteristic softening of Byzantine formulas through subtle chiaroscuro modeling of the faces and a more tender relationship between Mother and Child. The gold ground and formal composition maintain the icon tradition while the volumetric treatment of forms points toward the naturalism of the next generation.