Currently on View in C202
Unlike earlier painters of this traditional subject, Nosadella aimed for neither "sweetness" nor "devoutness," qualities that contemporaries desired in devotional paintings by artists like Bellini and Francia. Nosadella's work was instead valued for its power and erudition. He invests his figures with an almost grotesque muscularity and packs the composition with a sense of congested intimacy that borders on awkwardness. The central act of the Virgin's presentation of the Christ Child is literally inverted, so that her back is turned and her restless child reaches backward toward the viewer.