Getty Museum

Portable Altarpiece with the Weeping Madonna

Date

about 1480–1490

Medium

Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold and silver paint, and ink

Culture

French

Department

Manuscripts

Institution

Getty Museum

A bust-length Madonna, with head and eyes cast down and wearing a veil, forms a mournful devotional image. She is doubly framed, first by the rays of golden light emanating from her person and accompanied by a ring of stars and then by an elaborate gold and silver reliquary-like frame with Arabic inscriptions. At the top right, the royal emblem of the Nasrid dynasty of Grenada translates as "There is no victorious one except God." The other inscriptions are simply nonsensical arrangements of Arabic characters. Below the Madonna, the artist painted the first words of the prayer *O Intemerata,* creating the illusion that the words appear on a piece of parchment tacked to the wood of the frame *.* For this miniature, Georges Trubert, court painter to King René I of Anjou, copied a celebrated Byzantine icon of a weeping Madonna that belonged to King René. Trubert probably copied the now-lost icon of the Madonna accurately but concocted the elaborate frame from his imagination.

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.