page_title: Michelino Molinari da Besozzo
section_title: St. Luke Painting the Virgin
hierarchical_section_title: Michelino Molinari da Besozzo / Career / St. Luke Painting the Virgin
context_page_description: Michelino Molinari da Besozzo was a notable fifteenth century Italian painter and illuminator, who was widely praised for his work. He worked mostly in Milan and Lombardy, and was employed by the Visconti family, rulers of Milan. Michelino's work follows the traditions of the Lombard School, and maintains the Trecento style.
context_section_description: St. Luke Painting the Virgin is an illumination from a small Latin prayer book from 1420 which currently resides in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum. This prayer book holds the majority of Michelino’s existing work, and its text, consisting of 47 prayers, was written in dark brown ink by a single scribe. The book, now bound with 19th century velvet with silver clasps, includes 22 full-page illuminations with floral borders; however, half of the original miniature illuminations are now missing. The illumination of St. Luke Painting the Virgin depicts St. Luke finishing painting a panel of the Virgin and Child, and is among the first Western representations of this scene. Later in the 15th century and throughout the remainder of the Italian Renaissance this subject became increasingly popular, for St. Luke was patron saint of painters and painters’ guilds. Throughout the 15th, 16th, and 17 centuries, artists continued to propagate saintly artistic creation by showing St. Luke painting the Madonna and Child. Michelino's version features St. Luke standing as he works on a gable-topped panel, while in Georgio Vasari's 1565 fresco of the scene that resides in the church of Santissima Annuciata, St. Luke paints a portrait of an other-worldly sitter, who is also captured in Vasari's painting.
caption: Michelino da Besozzo, The Marriage of the Virgin, ca. 1430, tempera and gold on wood, 25 5/8 x 18 3/4 in. (65.1 x 47.6 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art
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