Day 2: I’d rather be a goldfinch than a pigeon

This morning I spent my first two and a half hours in the Uffizi.  I managed six galleries mainly late Gothic before deciding to take a break and start the Renaissance on a separate visit.  I then tried to leave the gallery resisting the temptation to ‘pop-in’ to rooms containing the most famous paintings until I was thwarted by Raphael.  Due to some room closures they had relocated his Madonna of the Goldfinch (which is the background of this blog) to a corridor on the bottom floor and it was impossible to miss.

Medieval legend had it that the goldfinch obtained its red face from plucking the thorns out of Jesus’ head during the crucifixion.  It therefore sometimes appears in Madonna & Child paintings as a premonition style symbol of Jesus’ future (other symbols including a reed cross, an open gospel, a lamb or the way Mary holds Jesus have the same purpose).

Anyway, earlier I had begun to build a collection of other such uses of the goldfinch by artists.  This is an early example by one of Giotto’s pupils, Bernardo Daddi:

Another of Giotto’s pupils, Taddeo Gaddi, produced this:

You can almost hear Mary telling her young son “let it go!”

But I found an even more unusual bird detail in Lorenzetti’s ‘Presentation of Christ in the Temple’

Have you ever spared a thought for how the two pigeons felt about being chosen as the offering for the baby Jesus?  I thought not.  Fortunately for you, Lorenzetti did, and shared his thoughts in this image of them, right in front of the altar fire on which they are about to be sacrificed!  Who would have believed a pigeon could be painted displaying so much emotion?