Madonna con angeli (Madonna among the angels)

Previati fuses sacred iconography and Symbolist idiom in Madonna con angeli. Undulating line and curvilinear, rhythmic forms dominate in his treatment of this traditional religious subject depicting the infant Jesus, whose glowing halo radiates from the central focus of the composition to illuminate Mary's face and the adoring angels. The Madonna and Child surrounded by angels are a recurrent image in Previati's œuvre. Perhaps the most famous of these is his first Divisionist masterpiece, Maternity (1890-91). The visibly nursing Madonna in this earlier variant garnered the artist acclaim and notoriety when he exhibited Maternity at the inaugural 1891 Brera Triennial in Milan. But Previati's Mother and Child thematic is part of a larger body of work dedicated to religious imagery which dates back to the Via Crucis of 1888 (Vatican Museum Modern and Contemporary Art Collection, Vatican City) and which draws on a variety of fonts from the Italian Primitives and Renaissance painters to the English Pre-Raphaelites. Previati's exploration of divine subject matter even earned him a gallery at the Esposizione di Arte Sacra in Lodi in 1901.