Giotto’s Birth of the Virgin

This depiction of the Virgin Mary’s birth pays attention to the homey details of a thirteenth-century Florentine aristocratic household. Those details portray a sequence: the baby is bathed and swaddled by maidservants in the bottom tier, while above she is handed to her mother, St. Anne, who reaches out eagerly for the child. (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy / Collection Dagli Orti / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)