Madonna of the Pomegranate [SEP] creator
Madonna of the Pomegranate
The Madonna of the Pomegranate ("Madonna della Melagrana") is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, circa 1487. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy.
The subject of the painting shows the Madonna and the Christ Child flanked by angels, with a pomegranate in hand. The pomegranate is the symbol of Christ's future suffering.
Several copies of the work exist, currently held at the Berlin State Museums, the Wernher Collection in London and the
as the "Madonna del Granato" (Madonna of the Pomegranate), whose cult in the vicinity of the sanctuary recalls the depiction of Hera with the pomegranate. The sanctuary was brought to light by the excavations of the archaeologists Umberto Zanotti Bianco and Paola Zancani Montuoro between 1934 and 1940.
Metopes.
Around seventy metope reliefs carved in local sandstone have been recovered in excavations. They had been broken up, often into small fragments, and had to be pieced together like jigsaws. Thirty eight of these belong to a