Virgin and Child

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's Virgin and Child of around 1395, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, exemplifies the conservative Giottesque tradition that persisted in Florence through the end of the Trecento. Gerini ran a large workshop that supplied altarpieces and devotional panels to churches and confraternities throughout Tuscany. This intimate panel likely served as a private devotional image, reflecting the growing market for domestic religious art among the Florentine mercantile class.

Executed in egg tempera on panel with tooled gold ground, the painting demonstrates Gerini's careful volumetric modeling of the Madonna's face and hands, combined with conventionalized drapery folds and punch-decorated haloes.