Madonna of Humility, called "Madonna of the Carriages"

The panel, recognized by critics as a work from Giovanni di Paolo’s fully mature phase, was until 1964 in the tabernacle on Via delle Terme – formerly called Via dell’Arte della Lana – above the door to the garage used by the coachmen of Siena, “vetturini” in Italian, thus its curious nickname, the Madonna dei Vetturini, Our Lady of the Coachmen. As testified by an inscription on the back of the panel, the work was placed in the tabernacle of the Arte della Lana, or woolworkers guild, in 1832 as a gift of the Mencherini family to the tabernacle of the Corporazione dei Linaioli (the linen-drapers association).

Now significantly damaged and cut down along the edges, the painting was originally the central panel of an altarpiece that had several elements, as indicated by the pose and gesture of the Child who, holding onto his mother’s cloak with his left hand, leans out of the composition, perhaps attracted by the presence of a donor or a saint.

The delicate freshness of the flesh tones, the precious colors, and the refined elegance of the folds in the Virgin’s veil make this work one of the highest expressions of Giovanni di Paolo’s art. Still quite distant from the sharp line and wooden, convoluted forms of his last phase, the artist here seems to be working under the influence of the splendid, elaborate elegance of late Gothic painting, with which Siena had come into direct contact in 1425 as a result of Gentile da Fabriano’s presence in the city.