This circular painting, or “tondo” by Alessandro Botticelli is my favorite painting by the artist. Located in the Uffizi Galleries, it depicts a hypnotically beautiful Virgin Mary being delicately crowned by two androgenous and wingless angels. The Christ child looks up adoringly at his divine mother and shadows her writing gesture with his right hand, while fingering a pomegranate (symbol of the passion) with his left. As Mary dips her stylus into the ink well, we can clearly read the words of the “Song of Mary”, better known as the “Magnificat” which give the painting its name.