Madonna of the Quail

A small panel made for private prayer holds two worlds at once. Half of the background is flat, shimmering gold, the old devotional language of icons, while the other half opens into a rose garden observed with a naturalist’s patience. The Virgin sits within it with the Child in her arms, and two angels hover overhead to crown her. Her face and bearing read less like a remote sacred figure than like one of the refined court ladies Pisanello was so skilled at portraying, a human warmth that looks ahead to the Renaissance. The title comes from the quail at her feet, painted with the same careful attention as the plants around it. Pisanello was famous for his animals, and a later guide to the museum reads the bird as an Eucharistic symbol, which gives the garden devotional weight as well as charm. Stylistically, the picture is International Gothic, with graceful line, rich surface and delight in detail. Its Madonna and her robes echo the work of Gentile da Fabriano, in whose workshop Pisanello was a member around 1415 to 1420, and its garden setting resembles the Madonna of the Rose Garden by Michelino da Besozzo or Stefano da Verona, also in the museum at Castelvecchio. Pisanello signed the panel as “Antonius Pisanus”, which makes it a rare, securely labelled early work by an artist whose biography is full of gaps. At roughly 67 by 43.5 centimetres, it shows that a small image can hold both the old Gothic world and the beginnings of the new one.