Monday's "Madonna and Child" by Francesco Vanni

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By TAHLIB

"The Virgin Offering the Christ Child to Saint Francis”

During this Christmas season, I've really been drawn to the image of the Madonna & Child. I don't know why but the mother & baby fascinated me this year than ever before. "You can generally depend on Italian Renaissance art for tasteful, traditional Christmas imagery, and 'Francesco Vanni: Art in Late Renaissance Siena' at Yale University Art Gallery delivers plenty of Madonnas, angels and adorable infants, wrote Martha Schwendener in The New York Times. "But it also offers a view of European art at a moment of upheaval and of an artist working in the centers of religious power and responding to these changes." I am not heading over to Connecticut, but I am going to make an effort to make Mondays my "Madonna & Child" day in the weeks ahead. I'll see how far it gets...and then stop. In the meantime, the show at Yale ends on January 5.

Yale University Art Gallery: Francesco Vanni: Art in Late Renaissance Siena,” (Ends Jan. 5); 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT; (203) 432-0600; artgallery.yale.edu