Madonna and Child in a Garden

Cosimo Tura's Madonna and Child in a Garden, painted around 1452 for the National Gallery of Art, presents the devotional subject within a hortus conclusus symbolizing the Virgin's purity. Tura's highly individual style sets him apart from all his contemporaries in the Quattrocento The Madonna and Child was the most ubiquitous devotional subject of medieval and Renaissance art, present in every church and many private homes as a focus for prayer and spiritual contemplation.

The garden setting is rendered with Tura's hard-edged precision, every leaf and flower described with almost obsessive detail while the Madonna's face and drapery display the angular, sculptural modeling that defines the Ferrarese manner.