Madonna and Child with a Cat

The Master of the Pala Sforzesca's Madonna and Child with a Cat, painted around 1483 and now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, is a charming domestic devotional image that reflects the playful naturalism beginning to enter Lombard painting under Leonardo da Vinci's influence in the early 1480s. Leonardo had arrived in Milan around 1482, and his drawings of the Virgin and Child with a cat — several of which survive — directly influenced Lombard artists who saw them. The Getty Museum's acquisition has made this a key document of Leonardesque influence on Lombard devotional painting.

Oil on panel with beginning Leonardesque influence visible in the soft, graduated tonal modelling of the faces and naturalistic rendering of the cat's fur and movement. The composition is intimate and informal — the Madonna and Child in a domestic setting with the cat as a naturalizing accessory.