Maria with the Child in front of a Rose Hedge

Pier Francesco Fiorentino's Maria with the Child in front of a Rose Hedge, painted around 1450 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, places the Virgin and Child in the setting of a rose garden — a subject that combined Marian symbolism (the Virgin was the Rosa Mystica of the Litany of Loreto) with the courtly culture of the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden of the Song of Songs that was interpreted as an image of Mary's virginity. Pier Francesco Fiorentino was a Florentine painter active in the second half of the fifteenth century who produced devotional works of considerable charm, if without major formal innovation.

Tempera on panel. The rose hedge creates an unusual naturalistic backdrop in place of the conventional gold ground, the red and white roses — both Marian symbols — filling the upper portion of the composition with decorative naturalism.