# Madonna and Child [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [LIPPI, Fra Filippo]() - Date: 1401-1450 - Technique: Tempera on panel, 79 x 52 cm ## Commentary Madonna and Child c. 1440 Tempera on panel, 79 x 52 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington The composition of this painting evinces the characteristic features that were to make Lippi's half-length images so appealing. Foremost among these is the intimate confrontation effected between the viewer and the sacred subjects depicted. The pictorial space is very shallow and the Madonna and Child, painted on a large scale, are pushed up against the picture plane. The presence of the Virgin is made more tangible and imposing by her cast shadow falling in soft hues against the back of the stone niche, giving physical dimensions also to the compressed space. The Virgin meets the eyes of the beholder, who must have been positioned close to the panel in the more intimate viewing circumstances of theses tabernacle images. It is not until the Madonna and Child paintings by Raphael that we encounter such an intimate relationship established between the viewer and the sacred figures through the manipulation of pictorial space and figure disposition. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Child]() - [Adoration of the Child with Saints \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Child with Saints]() - [Adoration of the Child with Saints]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Announcement of the Death of the Virgin]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()