Virgin and Child with an Angel

This Virgin and Child with an Angel, around 1487, in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, demonstrates Signorelli's mastery of the sacra conversazione type. The intimate devotional painting combines tender maternal sentiment with the artist's characteristic structural clarity Luca Signorelli's mastery of the male nude in violent action directly preceded and influenced Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, earning him an enduring place in Renaissance art history.

The figures are modeled with Signorelli's distinctive emphasis on three-dimensional form, their bodies solid and weighty beneath their draperies. The angel's wings provide a decorative counterpoint to the geometric stability of the central group.