Madonna and Child

This Madonna and Child, dating from 1426, is the central panel of the Pisa Altarpiece, Masaccio's major commission for the Carmelite church in Pisa. The panel shows the enthroned Virgin with the Christ Child eating grapes — a Eucharistic symbol — flanked by angels playing lutes. It is now in the National Gallery in London, one of the most important early Renaissance paintings in any British collection. The panel demonstrates Masaccio's ability to imbue the traditional gold-ground altarpiece format with revolutionary spatial depth and naturalistic figure modeling.

The throne is depicted with convincing one-point perspective, receding into depth in a way that was revolutionary for 1426 and directly anticipates the perspective experiments of Brunelleschi and Alberti. The Madonna's massive, columnar form creates an impression of monumental gravity, while the Christ Child's naturalistic gesture of eating grapes brings human intimacy to the divine subject. The consistent directional lighting from the left casts shadows that reinforce the spatial illusion, and the rich blues and golds of the tempera palette glow against the gilded background.