The Manchester Madonna

The angels on the left have scarcely acquired their final colour. Greenish areas and drawn folds remain beside fully painted bodies. Mary’s dark cloak also lacks the final layer of blue that would have changed its appearance. Michelangelo, the Florentine sculptor and painter, probably made this panel around 1494. It shows Mary with the infant Christ and the young John the Baptist, surrounded by angels. Christ reaches for the book she holds, while John looks out beyond the group. The unfinished areas reveal how an egg-tempera painting could develop. Green underpainting helped balance the warmer flesh tones that would follow. The finished figures show how much work still separated those first marks from a body with light, shadow and weight. Their closely packed arrangement resembles a carved relief, with little spare space around the people. We do not know why Michelangelo left the painting incomplete. Its familiar name comes from an exhibition in Manchester in 1857, where it was shown long after the artist’s death.