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The picture shows the central relief on the Fonte Gaia.
The figures of Acca Larentia and Rea Silvia ultimately derive from the antique, though we do not immediately sense the presence of a Roman model behind their rippling forms. But in the central relief of the Virgin and Child the core of classicism has been dissolved, and is succeeded by handling so personal that, in their present greatly weathered state, the figures seem to have been modelled and not carved. The treatment of the drapery is enlivened by dramatic use of shadow, and the figures, the seat and the curtain in the background are unified into a rhythmic whole.
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