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.
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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.
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