Discover the Master of the Magdalen, a 13th-century Florentine painter known for iconic Madonna & Child works and designs for Florence Baptistery mosaics. Explore tempera paintings with gold detailing reflecting early Renaissance influences.
Painted in the 1280s, this head is a fragment of a large painting of the Madonna and Child (whose blessing hand and knee can be seen). The artist was a close follower of Cimabue, the principal painter in Florence before Giotto. It was not uncommon to excise the head of the Madonna from a venerated image and encase it in another work of art as a focus of devotion.
