Madonna della Cintola

Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli's Madonna della Cintola, painted in 1484 and now in the Princeton University Art Museum, depicts the apocryphal miracle in which the Virgin Mary dropped her girdle (cintola) to the apostle Thomas from heaven at the moment of her Assumption, offering him — the perpetual doubter — physical proof of her bodily reception into paradise. This subject was of particular civic importance in Prato, where the relic of the Virgin's girdle was among the most precious treasures of the cathedral, but it was also widely represented across Tuscany as a devotional subject in its own right. Rosselli was a Florentine painter who worked in the tradition of the Ghirlandaio workshop, producing devotional panels and altarpieces of solid competence for Florentine ecclesiastical and private patrons. The Princeton panel preserves a type of Florentine devotional subject that combined Marian theology with a concrete miraculous narrative.

Rosselli arranges the composition vertically, with the ascending Virgin in glory above and the receiving Thomas below, connected by the descending girdle that functions as the narrative and visual link between the two realms. The Florentine tradition of clear spatial organization and confident figure modeling is evident throughout the well-preserved panel.