Madonna in Glory with Seraphim is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, executed c. 1469-1470. It is housed in Galleria degli Uffizi of Florence.
Some panel paintings of the Madonna by Botticelli remain from the years around 1470 which are striking expressions of Botticelli's stylistic development. Two full figure pictures of the Madonna - the Madonna in Glory and the Madonna of the Rosegarden - are in the Uffizi. They represent monumental seated figures filling the entire picture.
Mary is enthroned on clouds in a glory of seraphim. The Christ Child, with the cruciform nimbus, is looking towards the observer and raising his hand in blessing. Botticelli has succeeded in expressing the tensions in this theme with sensitivity: the mother, who is fully aware of the Passion her son will suffer, is holding him protectively in her arms.
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Famous quotes containing the words madonna, glory and/or seraphim:
“In our minds lives the madonna imagethe all-embracing, all- giving tranquil mother of a Raphael painting, one child at her breast, another at her feet; a woman fulfilled, one who asks nothing more than to nurture and nourish. This creature of fantasy, this myth, is the modelthe unattainable ideal against which women measure, not only their performance, but their feelings about being mothers.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needles eye.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?”
—Herman Melville (18191891)