Donatello
Pazzi Madonna
c. 1420
Sculpted by Donatello (c. 1386–1466) for the Pazzi family of Florence in the 1420s, the 'Madonna Pazzi' is a grey-marble relief depicting the Virgin cradling the infant Christ in intimate close-up. Carved in Donatello's signature 'rilievo schiacciato' (squashed relief), the figures are coaxed from the stone with such shallow modelling that they are almost drawn rather than carved — yet the exchange of gazes between mother and child is rendered with extraordinary tenderness. Now one of the defining early Renaissance works in the Bode Museum's sculpture collection in Berlin.
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons