The Virgin and Child in Glory with Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Bernard, Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim
Francesco Botticini (1446-1498) · c. 1475-1500
The Virgin and Child float in a glory of light, surrounded by rings of seraphim and cherubim and by four full length angels. Below them kneel two saints: Mary Magdalene, with her long hair and her jar of ointment, and Bernard of Clairvaux in his white Cistercian habit, holding an open book on which an inscription can be read. The composition is almost square and perfectly symmetrical, the heavenly vision above and the two human intercessors below, and the gold and bright colours were meant to glow above an altar in candlelight.
Botticini painted the panel for the high altar of the church of Cestello in Florence, a Cistercian foundation later dedicated to Mary Magdalene, which explains the choice of the two saints. Vasari saw it there and gave it to Cosimo Rosselli, and it kept that name for centuries; it was moved to the Cavalcanti chapel in the same church and remained there until eighteen twelve, when it was removed and sent to the Louvre in August under Napoleon's seizures. It was never returned. The attribution to Francesco Botticini, a Florentine contemporary of Botticelli, is now accepted.
Did You Know? Vasari thought the picture was by Cosimo Rosselli, and it travelled to Paris under that name; Botticini's authorship was recognised only later.
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