Madonna and Child (c. 1450): Art, History and Details

Madonna and Child (c. 1450) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lorenzo Ghiberti (Italian, 1378–1455).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This half-length Madonna represents one of the finest of about 40 surviving variants, all of which display many characteristics of the Florentine bronze sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. These features include serene facial types with narrow eyes and thin eyebrows, the careful arrangement of the Madonna and Child, forehead to cheek, and the infant's twisting pose. The popularity of this devotional relief began around 1420 and continued until around 1500. Ghiberti was the most successful bronze sculptor of the early Renaissance in Florence. His fame rests upon the commissions he received for two sets of bronze doors, completed between 1401 and 1424, for the Baptistry in Florence. The reclining figure of Eve on the base of this Madonna and Child (suggesting Mary as the new Eve) stems from a similar figure on the upper left door of the Porta del Paradiso, the second set of Baptistry doors. Eve's presence on the base clearly substantiates the attribution to Ghiberti and helps date the relief.

Object facts

• Title: Madonna and Child
• Date: c. 1450
• Creator attribution: Lorenzo Ghiberti (Italian, 1378–1455)
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: polychromed terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 81.3 x 59 x 21.6 cm (32 x 23 1/4 x 8 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1939.161

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., for the Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "The Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection Gift of Leonard C Hanna." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 6 (June 1939): 84-115
• Belli, Eleonora, David Lucidi, and Antonella Nesi. Intorno a Donatello: I Rilievi Mariani Del Primo Quattrocento Fiorentino Nella Collezione Dell’antiquario Stefano Bardini. Firenze: Centro Di, 2025.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.