Madonna and Child with Two Angels

Piero di Cosimo painted this Madonna and Child with Two Angels around 1507 for the Collezione Ricasoli. One of the most eccentric personalities in Florentine art, Piero combined a deeply personal vision with technical mastery, producing devotional works alongside his more famous mythological paintings filled with bizarre natural imagery. The tempera medium required careful preparation on a gessoed panel and a disciplined layering technique that produced precise, durable surfaces suited to the intricate detail expected of devotional painting.

The panel shows Piero's distinctive approach to the Madonna type, with unusual landscape elements and naturalistic detail that set his devotional works apart from the more conventional Florentine production, rendered in his precise tempera-and-oil technique.