Virgin and Child with Saints

Andrea di Giusto's Virgin and Child with Saints, painted around 1437 for the Statens Museum for Kunst, reflects the conservative current in mid-fifteenth-century Florentine painting. Andrea di Giusto was a follower of Fra Angelico and Lorenzo Monaco whose work maintained their devotional style through the mid-century. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The sacra conversazione arranges saints around the central Madonna in a balanced composition, rendered in the luminous color and careful gold tooling that reflect Andrea di Giusto's formation in the tradition of Fra Angelico.