Tiziano (c.1488-1576)
Madonna col Bambino (Madonna and Child)
c.1508
Oil on wood, 45.7 x 55.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Dating to about 1508, this devotional painting is one of Titian’s earliest and shows the artist experimenting with ways to capture the bond between the Madonna and Christ Child. Technical study has revealed that Titian originally arranged the figures sitting in a more traditional upright pose in the center of the canvas. By relaxing their posture, he afforded not a view of two divine icons but a glimpse of an intimate moment of shared affection. Their intercon-nectedness is poetically echoed in the tree, whose two trunks are linked at the base. (MET)