Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels

Jacopo di Cione, the youngest brother of the great Orcagna and a leading Florentine painter of the 1370s and 1380s, created this Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels around 1370. Jacopo carried on the family workshop tradition established by his brothers Andrea (Orcagna) and Nardo di Cione, producing major altarpieces for Florentine guilds and churches. Now at the National Gallery of Art, this panel reflects the Cionesque workshop style that dominated Florentine painting in the decades following the Black Death.

Painted in egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, this work combines the hieratic grandeur of the Orcagna tradition with Jacopo's somewhat softer figural style. God the Father appears above the enthroned Madonna in a vertically stacked composition, with flanking angels creating a symmetrical celestial court against an elaborately tooled gold ground.