This is probably the earliest of Michelangelo’s surviving paintings. It is unfinished – the black modelling of the Virgin Mary’s cloak has not had its final coats of blue, and the angels to the left have barely been begun. We don't know why the picture was never completed.
The Virgin sits on a rock with the Christ Child and young John the Baptist next to her. Angels stand on either side – we can make out the two on the left only by the lines drawn in to mark out the folds in their clothes and by the areas of greenish underpainting traditionally used to balance the pinkish flesh tones that would be painted over them.
Saint John the Baptist in his camel skin looks out past us, perhaps to suggest his role in preparing the way for Christ’s ministry. The way the figures fill almost the entire panel is similar to a marble relief and reflects Michelangelo’s training as a sculptor.
This picture – known as ‘The Manchester Madonna’ since 1857, when it was exhibited in the great Manchester Art Exhibition – is probably the earliest of Michelangelo’s surviving paintings.
The picture is unfinished – the black modelling of the Virgin’s cloak is without its coat of ultramarine blue, and the angels to the left were barely begun. We don‘t know why it was never completed. Michelangelo’s panel painting The Entombment of about 1500–1 was also left unfinished.
The Virgin Mary sits on a rock with the Christ Child and young John the Baptist next to her. Her right breast is bare suggesting that she has just been feeding her child who reaches up to grasp the book she is holding. The book may be the Old Testament open at Isiah 53 which prophesies Christ’s future crucifixion as she seems to try to hold it away from him, as though she doesn’t want him to discover his destiny.
Angels stand on either side; those on the left are rendered by lines drawn in to mark out the folds of their clothes and by the areas of greenish underpainting traditionally used to balance the pinkish flesh tones that would be painted over them. This was the traditional, Central Italian way of painting in egg tempera which Michelangelo progressively abandoned as he matured. Saint John the Baptist in his camel skin coat appears to be steadying his cousin, Christ, who is balanced precariously with one foot on a fold of his mother’s cloak. John looks out of the painting maybe to suggest his role in preparing the way for Christ’s teaching. He is usually shown with a scroll inscribed ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God’), referring to Christ’s crucifixion. This may be the scroll held by the angels.
Michelangelo trained in Florence, where drawing and unified, convincing compositional design were paramount, in the studio of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Here he learned to draw his compositions out on paper before transferring them to the wall or panel. We can still see the lines of the angels' drapery where he has transferred his preparatory drawing.
Because the Manchester Madonna is unfinished, we can see in action the technique for painting in egg tempera. It is most obvious in the hatched and cross-hatched brushstrokes of the black under-modelling on the Virgin’s cloak, which would be less visible if it were finished. Egg-based paints cannot be manipulated and blended on the surface of the painting and they dry rapidly, so they must be applied in hatched and stippled brushstrokes, and the different tones and values of colour required to show form, light and shadow have to be mixed in advance.
The paints are applied in sequence, with the darkest applied first and the highlight last. Because tempera paints are thin, the sequence has to be repeated again and again until the brushstrokes mesh and the tones appear to blend when seen from a reasonable distance. It is a long and painstaking process, but the picture reveals Michelangelo’s mastery of the technique. The downy feathers sprouting from the nearest angel’s back and the fluttering edges of the Christ Child’s tunic are very delicate effects that are difficult to achieve in egg tempera.
Despite this, the execution reveals Michelangelo’s training as a sculptor. He learned to sculpt at the Florentine court of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–1492), and it was with sculpture that he made his name in Rome in the last years of the fifteenth century. He used strong outlines to emphasise the Virgin’s shape and scraped away the surrounding paint, much like in sculpture, creating a strongly three-dimensional effect. The way the figures fill almost the entire panel, leaving no room for a landscape setting, is also similar to relief sculpture. Not coincidentally, Michelangelo based the angels on a sculpture: Luca della Robbia’s organ loft of the 1430s (Cathedral Museum, Florence).
The Manchester Madonna has been linked to a panel Michelangelo acquired in Rome in 1497. We do not know what this panel was used for and the figures in the Manchester Madonna are less fluid than in Michelangelo’s sculpture of the same date. Although the posture of the angel on the far right is similar to that of the marble Bacchus that he completed in 1497 (Bargello, Florence), the sculpture is markedly more animated and assured.
Importantly too, the close technical similarity between the Manchester Madonna and the work of Ghirlandaio and his studio, strongly suggests that Michelangelo painted it in Florence during his initial years as an independent artist in the early 1490s. There is also a clear connection to his contemporary friend and colleague Granacci’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt with the Infant Saint John (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). As in Michelangelo’s painting, Granacci places the Virgin on a rocky seat with the Christ Child in her lap and the young Baptist reaching up towards him. Granacci’s Christ Child appears to be an adaptation in reverse of Michelangelo’s Baptist, or vice-versa. Unfortunately we do not know the exact date of Granacci’s panel either – it is usually dated to 1494, but has been dated as much as a decade later.
