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History and development
The type of Marian representation known as the Madonna of Humility features the Virgin Mary cradling the Child Jesus while seated either directly on the ground on a on a small cushion on the ground. Both Madonna and Child partially look at the viewer. The earliest dated example is the panel located at the Museo Nazionale in Palermo, Italy. It bears the inscription Nostra Domina de Humiltate and the date 1346. A similar painting in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin,, sometimes attributed to Lippo Memmi or his circle, is believed to have been created a few years later. Both paintings were probably based on a Madonna of humility by Martini.

The oldest surviving Virgin of humility is a fresco by Simone Martini originally painted on the porch of the cathedral of Notre-Dame-Des-Doms in Avignon, France in the early 1340s. In the 1960s the fresco, severely eroded due to exposure to the elements, was relocated to the museum in the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France.

The Virgin's lowly posture was intended to express her humility by her closeness to the ground. Millard Meiss considered the Palermo panel a painting of mediocre quality, valuable only because of it is the earliest positively dated example of the image. and believed it to be based on a now-lost work by Simone Martini.

Humility was a virtue extolled by Saint Francis of Assisi, and this style of image was a product of Franciscan piety, first developed by them for contemplation; the word humility, from the Latin humus, meaning earth or ground.