Madonna and Child

In Verrocchio's superbly cultivated and intellectual art, naturalism is transfigured into a highly coherent stylization of reality. The "demon of vital, organic, articulate passion" (so called by Roberto Longhi) distorts bodies and drapery according to a basically Flemish pattern of representation, but a powerful sentiment brings back to unity and measure every detail on which the artist, in his obsession with form, has experimented.