A promising young man in the Padua of Donatello and Squarcione, Andrea Mantegna soon became one of the most famous artists of his time, a dominance confirmed by his definitive move to Mantua to the Gonzaga court. The Madonna and Child is a work of the artist's maturity, probably executed in the years in which the painter was working on the Triumphs of Caesar . This austere and at the same time moving image of motherhood prefigures the future sacrifice of Christ on the cross: the red coral bracelet worn by the Child and the distant gaze, veiled in melancholy, of the Virgin allude to it. The muted colors of the work are the result of Mantegna's adoption of his favorite tempera technique, which he uses by spreading thin glazes on a very fine linen canvas.