Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna of the Magnificat
“A face like a Botticelli angel” has long been a cliché for ethereal grace and beauty; the Madonna of the Magnificat gives us five of those angels, plus an equally lovely Madonna and Child. The five angels, young and wingless, surround the Virgin; two crown her with a coronet of gold stars, while the other three cluster on the left. One of these holds out a manuscript book, another proffers an inkwell, and the third folds them in a warm embrace, as if it were an intimate family portrait.
The Virgin, richly dressed and seated on a golden chair, grips a pen in one hand and with the other holds both her baby and a pomegranate. He, meanwhile, looks up and rests his hand on his mother’s right arm. Behind all the figures, not obvious at first, is a stone oculus window frame, with a view onto a rustic landscape. Its horizon sets up a stabilizing horizontal axis in contrast to the lively swirling motion of the curving forms of the figures in the foreground. Above, a golden disk sends down a shower of golden rays, indicating the presence of the Holy Spirit.
As a painting, it is a tour de force. The brilliant colors, the lavish application of gold paint, the delicacy of the translucent gauzy veil, the emotional tenderness, all make the lovely Madonna of the Magnificat a rival to any imperial Byzantine icon of the time. But Botticelli was not a facile artist. There is more here to contemplate than seven pretty faces.
For Office & Rosary
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
on the Congregation as a Wilderness by Paul Gregory Alms
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
