Madonna of the Magnificat 1481

Sandro Botticelli painted the Madonna of the Magnificat in Florence, Italy, sometime in the late 15th century. Botticelli renders the Virgin Mary not as an object of distant veneration but as a young woman. Yet she is being crowned Queen of Heaven, while she also guides the hand of her son as he writes. Botticelli came of age in a Florence dominated by the Medici family. They were great patrons of the arts, and the cultural movement they sponsored, Renaissance Humanism, focused on humankind, and especially on the creative potential of humanity. This focus on human potential helped to expand the social role of artists. In the Renaissance, wealthy families collected paintings, and portraits became increasingly important as a way of establishing status. It’s worth remembering that a painting like this had a social life that began long before it entered a museum. To understand that history better, we can look at records of patronage and collecting as well as theological debates about the proper ways of portraying religious figures. The meaning of art is contingent on its social and institutional context.