Madonna of the Stairs

In the period of the Medici Academy, in reaction to Bertoldo's erudite classicism, Michelangelo «reads» Giotto, the Pisanos, Masaccio and Donatello. In this «Madonna del latte» the poetic and formal concepts later found in the Sistine frescoes, the Doni Tondo and the figures of the Medici Chapels are already present in embryo: a moral tension harnessed in the contracted power of the forms.