Mary with the Child and Singing Angels

This Mary with the Child and Singing Angels from 1478 at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin depicts the Madonna surrounded by angels making music—a celestial concert celebrating the divine Child. The singing angels type gave Botticelli opportunity to arrange multiple figures in a compositional circle around the central pair, varying their expressions and postures in a demonstration of the figural inventiveness that characterized his mature workshop. The 1478 date places this work in the transition between his early phase and the great mythological paintings of the 1480s. The Gemäldegalerie's holding of multiple Botticelli works makes Berlin one of the primary centers for studying his development, alongside Florence's Uffizi.

The singing angels create a rhythmic frame around the Madonna, their flowing draperies and open mouths rendered with Botticelli's precise linear technique in a composition of remarkable decorative harmony.