Madonna and Child Surrounded by Angels c1450

Original on Wood, 93 x 85 cm ( 37.2" X 34")

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

About 1450 Fouquet undertook his most famous pair of pictures, the Melun Diptych (now divided between Berlin and Antwerp). On the left panel is Étienne Chevalier, treasurer of France in 1452, being presented by his name saint (Stephen) to the Virgin and Child on the right panel. The donor is placed before the variegated marble walls of a Renaissance palace, and the Madonna in three-quarter length is enthroned in an abstracted space, surrounded by nude, shining, chubby red and blue angels. Giant pearls bedeck the throne and Mary's crown. This image was surely scandalous in its own day, for the Virgin is a recognizable portrait of Agnes Sorel, the King's mistress, shown with a geometrically rounded, exposed breast. Chevalier had worked with Agnes Sorel in governing the shaky kingdom of Charles VII.