Just behind what I presume is ISG’s central post, a small putto overlooks. From that vantage, this Renaissance cherub has a direct line of sight to the back of the Throne and beyond to what whomever sits in that throne might see: to the right in the center of the courtyard is a small sarcophagus and beyond that, a larger one.

With the exception of this putto, the throne, sarcophagi, and portal were all acquired and placed before the museum opened in 1903. I am sure the East to West vector from a portal with an inscription of “Ave Maria”, backing up (framing?) a feminine throne situated at the center of a palace, with a child’s coffin and a man-sized one was all deliberately positioned by Isabella – the widowed mother who lost a child, in the center of her Fenway Court.

Sometime before 1915, a life-sized little one’s sculpted head was placed on the Italian stone doorway leading to the Spanish Cloister. The inscription on the lintel on which he is placed translates to “Holy Mary, full of Grace”. Somewhere around the time Jackie would have been fifty years old, his mother added the image of this angel baby to the tableau.