The Madonna of the Cherries

The Madonna of the Cherries at the J. Paul Getty Museum is among Metsys’s most lyrical devotional paintings, the fruit symbolizing the paradise Christ’s sacrifice would restore. Painted around 1529, the work belongs to the very end of Metsys’s career and shows his full synthesis of Netherlandish tradition with the softer modeling he absorbed from Leonardo da Vinci’s work, which he likely knew through copies and prints circulating in Antwerp. Metsys's religious paintings combine the Flemish tradition of meticulous naturalism with compositional ideas absorbed from Italian Renaissance models.

The sfumato modeling of the Madonna’s face reveals Leonardesque influence, with softly blended transitions replacing the sharper modeling of earlier Netherlandish painting. The cherries are rendered with jewel-like precision against the Virgin’s darker garments.