Manchester Madonna

The Virgin holds a book away from her child as angels read a scroll beside them. Michelangelo never finished this panel, and its bare patches let us watch a sculptor thinking in paint.

The story behind the painting

The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels, known as the Manchester Madonna, is an unfinished panel in the National Gallery, London, attributed to Michelangelo. It is one of three surviving panel paintings attributed to him and is dated to his first period in Rome. Wikipedia gives about 1497, while Wikidata gives 1494. It first came to public attention at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857, which gave it its name.

What to look for

The figures are arranged like a frieze that swells at the centre around the Virgin and Child, as in the later Pitti Tondo. Instead of a landscape there is a plain expanse of sky, there is no richly decorated throne, and the angels' wings are played down, all like relief sculpture. The Virgin has one breast bared, as if she had just nursed her son. Many areas are preliminary: the black of her robe was meant to be covered with lapis lazuli blue, and the angels on the left exist only in green underpaint. The panel measures about 105 by 77 cm.

Meaning and intent

The scene follows a non-Biblical tradition that the Holy Family met the young John the Baptist on the Flight into Egypt. The Virgin holds a book, traditionally Isaiah 53, away from her son, its words probably foretelling his sacrifice. She looks over her shoulder at a scroll read by two angels, which likely says Ecce Agnus Dei, Behold the Lamb of God, a phrase usually linked to John the Baptist.

Legacy

Attribution to Michelangelo was doubted for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but most scholars now agree. The completed angel nearest the Virgin resembles a sketch the young Michelangelo made as an apprentice of Domenico Ghirlandaio. That link to his training, together with the sculptural, frieze-like arrangement of the figures, supports the attribution. Today the panel offers a rare chance to see a Michelangelo painting left in an early, unfinished state.