Virgin adoring the Child

Jacopo da Sellaio trained in Filippo Lippi's workshop and subsequently worked in close association with Botticelli, and his Virgin Adoring the Child from 1473 reflects the devotional type that these Florentine masters had made fashionable — the Madonna kneeling over the prostrate Infant in an attitude of humble adoration. The motif had theological roots in the mystical literature of St. Bridget of Sweden, whose visions described the Virgin kneeling in adoration at the moment of the Nativity, and it was adopted by Florentine painters as a combination of doctrinal statement and emotional expressiveness. Sellaio's version is gentler and more decorative than Botticelli's comparable treatments, reflecting his position in the middle register of Florentine painting where sweetness of expression was commercially valued over psychological depth.

The Virgin's downward gaze creates a compositional oval — her head curving toward the Infant, who echoes the curve from below — that organises the composition around a continuous flowing line. The landscape background employs the pale blue-green Florentine aerial perspective. Sellaio handles the drapery with competent Lippesque fluency: the folds of the mantle gather naturally around the kneeling posture.