The Virgin and Child with a Columbine

The Virgin and Child with a Columbine from around 1525 by Bernardino Luini at the Wallace Collection is a devotional painting in which the flower holds symbolic significance—the columbine was associated with the Holy Spirit through its dove-like shape, and also with the sorrows of the Virgin through its bitter taste. The Wallace Collection holds several important Luini works as part of its distinguished collection of Old Masters assembled by the fourth Marquess of Hertford in the nineteenth century. The Madonna and Child was the most ubiquitous devotional subject of medieval and Renaissance art, present in every church and many private homes as a focus for prayer and spiritual contemplation. Luini's version brings his characteristic Leonardesque softness to the subject, the precise botanical rendering of the columbine adding symbolic depth to the intimate devotional image.

The Virgin and Child are rendered with Luini's characteristic soft modeling and gentle expressions, the columbine painted with botanical precision that adds symbolic depth to the devotional image.