Paolo Morando, 'The Virgin and Child with the Baptist and an Angel', probably about 1514-18

The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated in a leafy grove, accompanied by an angel and the young Saint John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin. Saint John wears his traditional camel-skin robe and holds a cross wound with a scroll inscribed ‘ECCE AGNUS DEI’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God’), referring to Christ’s future sacrifice for humankind.

Saint John presents a lemon to Christ, who points to the fruit and looks at us. The inclusion of the lemon is very unusual and is sometimes said to allude to the weaning of Christ, when Christ ceased to drink his mother’s milk and tasted the bitterness of his earthly destiny. The angel looks away as he touches the veil at the back of the Virgin’s neck. The green of the angel’s cloak, the tilt of his head and his downcast eyes mirror those of Saint John.

The citron or etrog tree is mentioned in the Bible. In Leviticus 23: 40 Moses commands that its first fruits are offered to God in thanksgiving. In the Song of Solomon (2: 3) it becomes a symbol of the beloved or Christ: ‘As a citron among trees of the forest, So is my beloved among the sons, In his shade I delighted, and sat down, And his fruit is sweet to my palate’. In Morando’s painting, the lemon is noticeably the only or first fruit in the grove, suggesting that Saint John is offering it in thanksgiving to Christ as the son of God. The Baptist and infant Christ both react differently – the Baptist looks away sadly with the foreknowledge of Christ’s crucifixion, but the infant Christ points to the fruit and turns to us, accepting his destiny and reminding us to give thanks.

Morando and contemporary viewers in Verona, where he worked, would have been familiar with this iconography. A lemon tree features prominently behind the Virgin and Child and Saint Anne in the central panel of the altarpiece for S. Maria della Scala, Verona, painted by Gerolamo dai Libri at about the same time. Morando painted a panel of Saint Roch as one of the flanking wings of the altarpiece. In the central panel, the lemon tree is in an enclosed garden, and Christ, the Virgin, and her mother Saint Anne sit on each other’s laps in its shade, like a family tree. Gerolamo dai Libri painted another very similar altarpiece, also including a lemon tree, behind the Virgin and Saint Anne, in S. Paolo in Campo Marzio, Verona, and another appears in his Madonna and Child with Saints Lorenzo Giustiniani and Zeno (1526) in San Giorgio in Braida, Verona. A single lemon is also placed as an offering before the Virgin and Child’s throne in Gerolamo dai Libri’s Madonna dell'ombrello (Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona) dated 1530.

Morando’s painting is signed at the top right corner: PAVLVS./ V (with abbreviation signifying ver) P̅, meaning ‘Paolo from Verona painted this’. The faces of the Virgin, Child and Saint John are in good condition, although other parts of the painting have been rubbed and restored.