Virgin and Child With The Infant St. John The Baptist (Botticelli) - Background and Iconography

Background and Iconography

The iconography of the Madonna with the infant Jesus is one of the most recurrent themes throughout art history. Its origin goes back to the hieratic representations of the High Middle Ages where Mary, crowned, enthroned or standing, presents the divine infant in her arms. The painters of the Italian Renaissance contributed to the widespread representation of the "Virgin of Tenderness", characterized by a more emotional and humane representation of this theme, rather than the strictly sacred approach given by the Byzantine art. In the words of Marcio Doctors, the Renaissance Madonnas mark "the Renaissance spirit which it characterizes: faith in mankind, as subjectivity, placing it in the center of the world. Both the Renaissance and the maternal love embrace the man in the same way when they make the world revolve around him".

Botticelli produced a large number of Madonnas during the decades of 1480 and 1490. A considerable part consisted of tondi, in which the artist portrayed Mary, the Divine Child and the Infant Saint John the Baptist in worship. The tondi (tondo, singular) were works of art in circular shape (paintings or sculptures), mostly of sacred or historical themes. They were much appreciated in the 15th century and often ordered by patrons and guilds to decorate palaces or for use as objects of private devotion.