Virgen de la galería

One of the earliest Madonnas by the young Botticelli, so damaged that people doubted it was his. Then, in 2004, restorers found his signature.

The story behind the painting

The Madonna della Loggia is dated to about 1467, when Botticelli had recently left the studio of his master Filippo Lippi and moved to work with Andrea Verrocchio. It is one of his earliest paintings of the Virgin and Child, and some see it as inspired by a Lippi Madonna made around 1460 for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. It was probably made for private devotion at home and may once have stood in a tabernacle frame. It was given to the Uffizi in 1784 by the Chamber of Commerce and Arts.

What to look for

Mary and the child sit in a loggia, an open porch that was part of a building, painted in browns and creams. Mary wears a dark blue cloak over a bright red dress, with a head covering and a faint, translucent halo. The child, in a light pink robe, has a large bright halo. Behind them a green landscape opens with a road that seems to lead to a town. Look at how the two lean together: the pose follows the Glykophilousa, or Sweet Kissing type, in which Mary seems to receive her son's affection.

Meaning and intent

Wikipedia reads Mary's blue as purity and her red dress as a sign of love. The loggia itself became a habit for Botticelli: from the mid 1460s he painted several Madonnas in a similar setting, each with a different style of porch, and his Madonna and Child of 1470 repeats almost the same loggia and the same mother and child. The sources disagree on size. Wikidata gives 72 by 50 cm, while the Wikipedia article states 70 by 147 cm, so the exact measurements are uncertain here.

Legacy

For a long time the painting's poor condition made its authorship doubtful. A conservation treatment in 2004 changed that: it uncovered Botticelli's signature and brought back other missing details. In September 2019 the painting travelled to Vladivostok for the Eastern Economic Forum and was shown to the public at the university there, then at the Primorye State Art Gallery. In November it moved on to Saint Petersburg, where it was displayed at the Hermitage during the International Forum of Culture.