Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist

Martino Piazza, a painter from Lodi in Lombardy, created this Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John around 1517. Working in the provincial Lombard tradition influenced by Leonardo's Milanese school, Piazza served local churches and devotional patrons. The tempera-on-panel medium required a carefully gessoed surface and was painted in fine, precise layers, yielding a luminous, jewel-like surface of great durability.

The panel shows the Lombard provincial style with Leonardesque sfumato influence on the figure modeling, characteristic of Lodi painting in the early sixteenth century.