Description
The painting is tender and intimate. The Child, just awakened, plays a game with the Madonna's veil, with a melancholy Saint Joseph looking on from the shadows.
The use of veil in Renaissance paintings, from the Meditations on the Life of Christ, symbolizes the manner in which the Madonna wrapped the Child in the veil from her head at the Nativity and, prophetically, again at the Crucifixion.
Saint Joseph's melancholy nature in this picture may signal his proclivity for prophecy and the coming events for the Child. Saint Joseph seemed to be an after-thought, x-rays of the painting show that Saint Joseph was painted over a window previously over the Madonna's shoulder. Further, the change in the position of the Child's right foot was revealed via x-ray. These changes align with Raphael's preliminary drawings for the painting.
The Madonna's dress, frame and angle of her head are reminiscent of Justice in the Stanza della Segnatura which was painted about the same time as this painting. It is also reminiscent of the Madonna of the Blue Diadem.
Read more about this topic: Madonna Of Loreto (Raphael)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)