The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child
Sandro Botticelli (About 1445 to 1510) · About 1485
The Virgin kneels in a flowery meadow with her hands joined, gazing down at the infant Christ who sleeps on a fold of her blue mantle. Behind her a wall of roses, a thicket of dark green bushes and a slender tree close off the space, and a sliver of pale sky shows at the top. Nothing happens, and that is the point. The picture is an invitation to quiet devotion, and the sleeping child is a gentle foreshadowing of his death, laid out like a body on a shroud.
Botticelli's line is the thing to look for. The outline of Mary's face, the ripples of her golden hair under the transparent veil, the long fingers, the curve of the baby's body are all drawn with the flowing, slightly melancholy grace that made him the most refined painter in Florence. The roses stand for Mary's purity and love, and the strawberry plants near the child were symbols of the fruits of righteousness. The painting is on canvas rather than panel, which was unusual for Florence in the 1480s, and the surface has a delicate, matt quality closer to fresco than to oil.
The picture belonged for generations to the Earls of Wemyss and hung at Gosford House in East Lothian, so it was known only to specialists until the family sold it in 1999. The National Galleries of Scotland bought it with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund, and it was one of the largest acquisitions the gallery had ever made. It is the only major Botticelli in Scotland, and it hangs among Italian panels that let you see how his style grew out of Filippo Lippi and led towards Raphael.
Did You Know? The picture had never been publicly exhibited before 1999, when its sale from Gosford House caused a sensation.
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