The exhibition includes one of these gifts, the head of a woman identified as Cleopatra (c. 1532-33), which like theMadonnaandChild has passages so finely worked that any sign of the artist's hand has disappeared.
Examples such as theMadonnaandChild provide insight into how Michelangelo's drawings became so famous in his own day that such literary figures as Pietro Aretino repeatedly beseeched him to send any piece of paper from his hand.
While Giotto developed a sense of volume in his painting, Duccio stuck to the two-dimensional painting of Cimabue and surpassed it, leavening the Byzantine forms with brilliant hues and a tenderness between MadonnaandChild (pictured) that could touch his viewers.