Virgin and Child with an Angel

Virgin and Child with an Angel, painted around 1490 and now at the Courtauld Gallery, places Bartolomeo di Giovanni's work within London's strongest collection of Italian and French painting. The Virgin and Child format was among the most frequently commissioned in late Quattrocento Florence, and di Giovanni's version reflects the broad type established by Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, and the young Leonardo: a three-quarter view Madonna with the child at her breast or on a parapet, an angel typically at her side. The Courtauld's acquisition reflects the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century market for Florentine Quattrocento panels that brought many workshop works to British collections.

Tempera or oil on panel. The three-figure composition — Madonna, Child, angel — is treated as a spatial problem in shallow-relief organisation. The angel's presence adds visual balance and theological reference to the celestial company surrounding the sacred figures. Florentine workshop figures of this period are rendered with soft, carefully blended facial modelling.