In Taddei Tondo, how is the Description discussed?
The tondo as a format for painting and relief sculpture was a quintessential product of the Florentine Renaissance. During the century after 1430, all the leading artists created tondi, including Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, Piero di Cosimo, Fra Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci (in a lost work), and Raphael. For a few years Michelangelo also experimented with the form. He executed the Doni tondo, his only panel painting documented in contemporary sources, and he also began two unfinished tondo sculptures, the Pitti and Taddei tondi, but after that he never returned to the tondo form in either medium.This tondo depicts a seated Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus dynamically sprawled across her lap, turning and looking back over his right shoulder toward the infant Saint John the Baptist, who stands before him looking down and holding a fluttering bird. When viewing the composition, the eye of the viewer is drawn diagonally along Christ's body, back up that of his mother, follows her gaze across to John, and from his face back to Christ. John, patron saint of Florence, with his attribute of a baptismal bowl, crosses his arms, perhaps in allusion to the cross. Most likely the bird he holds is a goldfinch not a dove - Christian symbolism sees in this bird a representation of the Passion. The unfinished portion of the marble below the bird might have been intended to become a crown of thorns.Michelangelo's execution with only a point and claw chisel, often driven hard and with great energy, is a combination of techniques that helps create a sense of "surface unity" unbroken by the use of the drill. The Christ child, almost completely in full relief is the only figure that is highly finished (except for the feet), St. John is much less finished, Mary is the least finished, and the background is only roughly executed. One critic declares a belief that these marked variations in texture help establish the relative status of the three figures while creating a sense of compositional depth all the greater for not being more conventionally "finished".Many of Michelangelo's works are unfinished. Circumstances around each being unfinished vary. Critical opinions address some of his unfinished works as if completed, however. The nineteenth-century French sculptor and critic Eugène Guillaume declared that, what he labeled as Michelangelo's "non finito", was "one of the master's expressive devices in his quest for infinite suggestiveness".
Raphael Leonardo da Vinci Passion crown of thorns Virgin Mary goldfinch Florence John the Baptist patron saint marble Piero di Cosimo composition baby Jesus Filippo Lippi baptismal Fra Bartolomeo Pitti relief tondo Botticelli Andrea del Sarto Luca Signorelli Doni tondo dove Michelangelo sculpture Saint John the Baptist attribute cross Christian symbolism point and claw chisel Eugène Guillaume