Madonna and Child

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Artist: Pietro Perugino (Italian, 1448–1523)
Medium: oil on poplar panel
Size: overall: 70.2 x 50 cm (27 5/8 x 19 11/16 in.); framed: 88.9 x 69.9 x 8.3 cm (35 x 27 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.)
Museum: National Gallery of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Seen from the lap up, a woman wearing a marine-blue robe over a crimson-red dress holds a nude baby boy on her lap in this vertical painting. Both people have smooth, pale, peachy skin. The woman sits with her body angled to our left and she looks down at or toward the baby. Her blond hair is pulled back with a blue ribbon or covering at the back of her head. She has delicately arching eyebrows, a long, straight nose, and her small pink lips are closed.

The moss-green underside of her blue robe is visible where it turns back over her wrists and around her neck. Her red dress is edged with black along the squared neckline and tied at the waist with a black band. She supports the seated baby with her right hand, on our left, and holds her other hand at the ready near his legs. The baby sits angled to our right, toward the woman, but he turns to look over his shoulder to our left. His blond hair falls to a point over his forehead.

He has delicate features with light brown eyes, a small, pointed nose, and a small, pink mouth. He also has pudgy, baby-like cheeks, tummy, arms, and legs. The horizon of the landscape behind the pair comes about three-quarters of the way up the panel, behind the woman’s shoulders. Hazy blue mountains, trees, and the suggestion of a town with buildings and a church spire line the horizon in the deep distance beneath a pale blue sky.