La Vierge et l'enfant

Taddeo di Bartolo was the most important Sienese painter of the generation after the Black Death, working from the 1380s through 1422 and bridging the Trecento tradition established by the Lorenzetti brothers and the International Gothic influx of the early fifteenth century. His Madonna and Child panel belongs to a type of portable devotional image — a small panel for domestic or private chapel use — that formed the commercial backbone of late medieval Sienese painting workshops. Taddeo's Virgins are distinguished from his predecessors by a softer, more maternal emotional quality in the relationship between mother and child.

Taddeo di Bartolo builds his Madonna on the gold ground standard in Sienese panel painting, using the layered tempera glazing inherited from Duccio's tradition. The Child's flesh is built with a warm yellow-ochre underpainting over which cool pinkish highlights define the baby's rounded face and limbs.