Madonna of the Rose Garden

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Madonna of the Rose Garden: Sandro Botticelli

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Art Type: Various Paintings
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Sandro Botticelli Various Paintings - Madonna of the Rose Garden

Keywords: Madonna, Rose, Garden

Work Overview: Madonna of the Rose Garden
Artist Sandro Botticelli
Year 1469–1470
Medium tempera on panel
Dimensions 124 cm × 64 cm (49 in × 25 in)
Location Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Madonna of the Rose Garden is a tempera on panel painting (124x64 cm) made by Sandro Botticelli, whose date of between 1469 and 1470 makes it one of his earliest paintings. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The work was in the Chamber of Commerce of Florence which leads to the hypothesis that like Botticelli's earlier painting, the Madonna della loggia, it had been commissioned either by the Wool Guild or the Tribunale della Mercanzia.

Wilhelm von Bode was the first to date the work to the artist's juvenile phase, in particular to the period of Verrocchio, 1469-1470, which has since been confirmed by other scholars.

The Virgin Mary, with a pensive attitude, is holding the Christ Child on her knees beneath a loggia with columns supporting a semicircular arch with a coffered ceiling, framing the head of the Virgin and following the curved profile of the board. Behind Mary extends a garden with its pink roses dominating the foreground. Below her is a floor with framed marble tiles which demonstrates the painter's mastery of perspective technique.

The roses symbolize one of the titles of Mary, "Mystical Rose". The pomegranate, which Mary holds in her hand and which the Child is tasting, symbolizes fertility, royalty, and with its red color, the blood of the Passion of Jesus.

The work shows incisive use of chiaroscuro reminiscent of Verrocchio, in whose workshop Botticelli may have trained. The same type of child, with a large oval head and joyful lively expression, can be seen in Verrocchio's sculpture Putto con delfino from the same period. The figure of Mary is elongated and loosely posed, much more so than in the works of Filippo Lippi, another of the young Botticelli's models.

There are some uncertainties in space such as the disproportion of the architectural background which is too small compared to the figure of Mary and also compared to the flowers in the garden behind her.

Some panel paintings of the Madonna by Botticelli remain from the years around 1470 which are striking expressions of Botticelli's stylistic development. Two full figure pictures of the Madonna - the Madonna in Glory and the Madonna of the Rosegarden - are in the Uffizi. They represent monumental seated figures filling the entire picture.

Arising strictly from the format of the picture, the arch structure frames the group of mother and child sitting on a stone bench. There is a powerful three-dimensional quality to the figures. Behind the Madonna we can look out onto a garden. A rose bush is clearly visible there, a traditional symbolic image referring to Mary.

Composition, shape and stylistic elements put this Madonna and Child close to another panel painted by Botticelli in his youth, the Fortitude, dated around 1470.

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Sandro Botticelli

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