Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Donors and Saints Dominic and Elizabeth of Hungary

Artist/Maker Lippo Vanni (Italy, active 1344-1376)

Dateca. 1343

Mediumtempera on wood

DimensionsFramed: 80 1/4 x 102 1/2 x 6 in. (203.8 x 260.4 x 15.2 cm)

ClassificationsVisual Works

Credit LineGift of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Terms

Object number61.024.000

On View

On view

Collections

Art of Europe

DescriptionOne of the most talented followers of Pietro Lorenzetti (active 1306?-ca. 1348), Lippo Vanni trained and worked in Siena. This altarpiece was painted early in his career, during a sojourn in Naples in 1342-1343. It is of great historical importance because it is one of the few works that has survived intact from the period when the French royal house of Anjou ruled Naples (1266 1435). Two fourteenth-century members of the Angevin family, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary and her son, Price Andreas, who wears a cloak decorated with fleurs-de-lis, the armorial emblem of the kings of France, are shown kneeling at the feet of the Virgin. Their diminutive size and position in relation to the Madonna and Child was customary in Italian medieval art for representing those individuals who donated the painting to the church. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, on the right-hand wing of the altarpiece, was the Queen’s patron saint. Saint Dominic may have been included because the altarpiece was painted for a Dominican foundation.
Visual Description

Ornate wooden altarpiece with three painted portraits inside separate pointed arches. Two smaller wings flank a larger central panel, topped with golden ornate carvings, separated by tiered spires. The panel on our left features a bearded man with light skin tone cradling a red box in his arms. On our right, a woman with ashen skin tone wears an orange dress gathered at the front to hold roses. Between them, in the central panel, an oversized woman with ashen skin tone sits on a throne with an infant with light skin tone in her lap – the Madonna and Child. Standing at their feet, two diminutive figures in crowns and floor length capes gaze up at them.