Bernardino Bergognone, 'The Virgin and Child with Two Angels', 1490-5

A serene young mother balances a toddler on her lap, tenderly supporting him with one hand and holding an open book in the other. This is no ordinary mother – she sits on an elaborate throne and is serenaded by angelic musicians, and both mother and child have gilded haloes. This is the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.

The red cross on Christ’s halo looks forward to his future crucifixion. Although she is not wearing a crown, Mary’s rich dress, the angels and the elaborate carving of the throne indicate that this is the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, one of her most popular guises. Look closely and you can see the fine gold embroidery around the edges of her cloak, and at Christ’s neck and wrists, and the almost translucent scarf around her head and shoulders.

Innumerable variations on the theme of the Virgin and Child were painted during the Renaissance, when Mary was the main focus of religious devotion, especially in Italy (see, for example, The Virgin and Child by Cima da Conegliano, or a version by Giorgio Schiavone, or another by Andrea di Aloigi). This picture may have been part of a polyptych, which was subsequently cut into pieces, or simply made as a small panel for private devotion: the gentle, maternal Virgin was seen as more approachable and forgiving than God the Father, with whom she could intercede on behalf of sinful humankind.

The artist, Bernardino Bergognone, was the younger brother of one of the leading Milanese painters of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Ambrogio Bergognone. You can make out his name in the letters around the hem of the Virgin’s mantle, where her shoe peeps out from beneath it. The styles of the two brothers were similar – compare this with the Virgin in Ambrogio’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Catherine of Siena – although Bernardino was, if anything, even more traditional, and more influenced by Vincenzo Foppa.