Madonna of the Sea
Sandro Botticelli (attributed; some scholars propose Filippino Lippi) (about 1445 to 1510) · about 1477
A small panel with a large presence. The Virgin sits in a loggia with the Christ Child on her lap, and behind her, through the arch, a calm sea stretches to the horizon under a pale sky. The child holds a pomegranate, the fruit whose red seeds stood for the blood of the Passion, and looks out at you with unusual seriousness, while his mother's eyes are lowered. The picture was probably made for private devotion, small enough to hang in a bedroom, and the seascape gave it the name by which it has been known since the nineteenth century.
Look at the Virgin's face and hands. The long neck, the transparent veil, the fine gold lines in the hair and the slightly melancholy expression are the marks of Botticelli's early manner, learned in the workshop of Filippo Lippi. The pomegranate, the drapery falling in soft folds and the delicate landscape all recur in his later Madonnas. The attribution has been discussed for a century: some scholars give the panel to the young Filippino Lippi, Filippo's son and Botticelli's pupil, whose style was so close at this date that the two are hard to separate. Whoever painted it, the quality is very high, and the tenderness between mother and child is what stays with you.
The painting came from the convent of Santa Felicita in Florence, and entered the Academy's collection after the suppression of religious houses, when hundreds of works from churches and convents were gathered here for the students to study. It hangs among the fifteenth-century Florentine paintings in the first room, an easy work to walk past on the way to the David, and one of the few Botticellis in Florence outside the Uffizi.
Did You Know? The pomegranate in the child's hand was a symbol of the Resurrection, its many seeds under one skin also standing for the unity of the Church.
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