Madonna and Child of Monticchiello

The Virgin supports the Christ Child in an unusually intimate exchange of glances. Seen in profile, the child tilts his head back to look at his mother, while their hands meet near the centre of the panel. Pietro Lorenzetti combines the traditional gold ground and delicately incised haloes with a new sense of physical and emotional immediacy. Painted around 1315, this panel came from the church of Saints Leonard and Christopher in Monticchiello and is now in the Diocesan Museum of Pienza. It was probably part of a now-dispersed polyptych.

The visual centre of the panel does not coincide exactly with the direction of the bodies. Mary holds the Child before us, yet Jesus turns toward her, drawing attention away from a purely frontal devotional image. Our gaze first encounters the sacred figures, then registers the boy's movement, and finally discovers his mother's response.