Madonna and Child 2018 Forever Stamps — Bachiacca Detail, $19.99–$149.99, Booklet of 20

Issue facts

Issue Date: October 3, 2018
First Day City: Santa Fe, NM
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset, Microprint
Format: Double-sided booklet of 20

The painter

Bachiacca (1494–1557), born Francesco d'Ubertino Verdi, came from a family of artists and apprenticed under Pietro Perugino — Raphael's teacher, who later brought him into the court of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.

He was one of the artists who pushed Italian Renaissance painting toward Mannerism, with its stretched proportions and deliberately unreal elegance. What distinguished him from his contemporaries was how he worked: rather than basing pictures on other people's compositions, as was common, he absorbed Italian, German and Netherlandish sources and merged them into something of his own.

The flowers in this painting

Bachiacca was known for painting plants and animals with unusual precision, and in the Madonna and Child the botany is deliberate. The infant Jesus holds a sprig of jasmine, which blooms in May — the month of Mary. Cornflower, rose and sweetbriar appear elsewhere in the picture, each standing for Jesus or for Mary.

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