Madonna and Child by

The subject of the work I observed was a Madonna enthroned painting, a pictorial representations of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with her child. The event depicted shows baby Jesus sitting on his mother's lap. As for symbolism and representation, “The significantly larger size of the Madonna and child group indicates that they are more important. Her traditionally red gown signifies the passion of Christ and her blue mantle that she is queen of Heaven. Her ornate throne, which repeats aspects of Gothic architecture, signifies that she is not only the queen of Heaven but represents the Catholic Church itself. The golden star that falls on her shoulder derives from her title "Star of the Sea" (Latin Stella Maris), which is the meaning of the Jewish form of her name, Miriam (Minneapolis Institute of Arts)”. The work is representational, somewhat non realistic because of fine visible brush strokes. The work is large and the size did affect the impression this work made on me. I like big art works because it's just that much better to look at, being able to observe many details of the artist. The work stands at a height of 5 feet tall and almost 2 feet in width. The painting does look a bit flat and doesn't really have any space. By this I'm referring to character's face, hands and feet. Proportions of the face were off which caused it to look flat. The reason I said this painting is somewhat unrealistic was because of the black brush strokes. Despite it being flat, Buonaccorso did a good job of shading. The gown of Mary and baby Jesus' clothing shows a bit of volume. From my observation, the colors I see on this painting are yellowish-gold, dark-blue, reddish pink and black. As for it's overall composition, I didn't really like it because it's so small in terms of width. So everything was squeezed into such a small space. Unlike other Madonna paintings, this one doesn't have any angels or other characters besides Mary and Jesus. In my opinion, the artist combined the