Madonna and Child

Giovanni di Pietro Falloppi's Madonna and Child, dated around 1420 and held in the Louvre, is a Bolognese painting from the early decades of the fifteenth century, when Bologna was absorbing the International Gothic style filtering in from Lombardy and Venice. Falloppi represents the local Bolognese tradition that was not at the cutting edge of Italian painting but sustained a continuous output of devotional images for local churches, confraternities, and private patrons. Madonna and Child panels were the most numerous category of devotional painting produced in the period, and Falloppi's version demonstrates how the type was rendered in a skilled provincial workshop.

Falloppi employs the gold ground with warm flesh tones in the late Gothic Bolognese manner. The Virgin and Child are rendered with gentle tenderness, the relationship between mother and infant conveyed through close proximity and shared gaze. Drapery folds follow the soft, rounded conventions of the Bolognese Gothic tradition.