Andrea Previtali, 'The Virgin and Child adored by Two Angels', about 1505

The Virgin Mary is seated on the ground in the valley of a north Italian mountainous landscape. The naked infant Christ sits upright on her lap, holding two cherries, symbolising the fruit of paradise. Two angels kneel before him, their arms crossed in adoration and hands clasped in prayer. In the distance, hilltop fortresses perch on rocky crags above a town spanning a river.

Images of the Virgin seated on the ground in a landscape are known as the Madonna of Humility. This type of composition was favoured by Previtali’s teacher, the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini, and can be seen in his Madonna of the Meadow. It was intended to express the Virgin’s humility and her presence in everyday life. X-ray images of the painting reveal that the Virgin originally looked out at the viewer, but Previtali repainted her face. Now none of the figures look at each other or us, and their distant gazes give the painting a still, contemplative atmosphere.

Previtali used shell gold, made with real gold powder, throughout the painting: in delicate lines on the feathers of the angel’s wings, for the haloes and the decorations of all the robes, even in the trees and bushes on the hillsides and in the highlights on the scaffolding poles in the far left distance. Highly characteristic of Previtali’s early work, this use of real gold paint was not just decorative but was intended to express divine illumination.

In the clouds you can see where the paint has been marked by the artist’s finger and thumb – this is also highly characteristic of Previtali’s early work and can be seen in The Virgin and Child adored by Two Angels. The distinctive forms of the landscape, especially the branching of the bare tree, are also typical of Previtali’s early style, as are the small weeds amid the foreground stones.

The painting is based on a composition by Boccacio Boccaccino, The Virgin and Child with Angels of about 1500. The whereabouts of Boccaccino’s painting is now unknown, but a photograph of it exists from 1929. The chief difference between the two paintings is that Previtali’s Christ is active, sitting up facing the angels and holding cherries, whereas Boccaccino’s Christ Child is passive: lying down facing away from the angels, his head supported by the Virgin who is offering him an apple. The landscapes are also different.

It was not unusual in the Renaissance for contracts for altarpieces to stipulate that an artist should follow an established model. Artists generally felt free to depart in places from the given example, and where they did follow it exactly it was perhaps because the image was regarded as sacred. Previtali’s painting looks like an attempt to repeat a recent success such as one might expect if he were working in Boccaccino’s workshop. However, there is no evidence that he did, and so his decision to copy Boccaccino’s composition is unusual and unexplained. It may have been at the suggestion of the patron.

The painting was transferred from panel onto canvas, which has caused some damage. It has also suffered from damage caused by aggressive cleaning during the mid-nineteenth century or earlier.