The “Madonna del sudore” in Ravenna Cathedral: Art and devotion

Abstract

Due to its perfectly balancing the heritage coming from Avignon and from Byzantium, this little painting on wood is a sort of unicum among the same-age artworks depicting the Virgin and the Child. Cause of devotional reasons, we only knew its recto, so far: thanks to the help offered by the curia of Ravenna, the verso comes to the light in this study for the first time after the restoration by Cesare Brandi in 1958, as well as for the first time it’s here directly studied, definitively ascribed and contextualized.