Crivelli Madonna And Child

Crivelli’s painting shows the Madonna behind the inscribed marble slap delicately holding the infant Christ. Christ is sitting on a cushion, holding a bird and surrounded by a carnation, cherries and a book of hours. Set against a fading blue background, behind them are two angels and above the group of figures is an array of fruit hang overhead. While retaining strong iconography of the christian imagery before its time, Crivelli’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels changes some of those details in order to focus on the divine-human duality of the Virgin and Christ.

The figures’ placements and positions indicate the extent of each one’s divine nature or humanity — the closer they are to the viewer, the closer they are to our human world. The angels, being not of this world are in the background, look away from the viewer. The Madonna and Child,
In the clothes, Crivelli pays much more attention to both the Madonna and Child than to the angels’. Apart from the embroidery of the Virgin’s cloak, the drapery folds of the Madonna and the Child’s clothes, as well as the jewels on Christ’s head and those decorating the Madonna’s cloak, dress, and crown are rendered with a strong sense of definition that is almost three-dimensional and sculptural. That being said, Crivelli flattens all of his figures out by heavily outlining and contouring them with a dark brown or black, reminding us that they are not physical beings in our world. Yet again, Crivelli subtly distinguishes the extent of humanity between the angels, and the Madonna and Child though the jawlines. The angels are much more heavily contoured than both the Madonna and Child whose jawlines are blurred out, as though to enhance and emphasise the physicality of their bodies. This is particularly ingenious in the hint of the Virgin’s collarbone which is rendered with a soft stroke of