In the tondo, we see the Virgin Mary writing the Magnificat with her right hand, with a pomegranate in her left, as two angels crown her with the Christ child on her lap.

[2] The work portrays the Virgin Mary crowned by two of five angels, a sheer veil covering her flowing blonde hair and a Byzantine style scarf around her shoulders.

As Mary writes in the Magnificat, the infant Jesus guides her hand, looking up to the clear blue sky, or perhaps to his mother, softly returning his gaze.

Many art historians have debated that Mary is thought to be a portrait of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, wife of Piero de' Medici, and the two angels holding the book to be her sons Lorenzo and Giuliano.In Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Artists, Vasari states:In the Guardaroba of the Signor Duke Cosimo are two very beautiful female heads in profile by this master, one is said to be the portrait of an inamorata of Giuliano de' Medici, brother of Lorenzo; the other that of Madonna Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo's mother.

The Madonna is simultaneously portrayed as a maternal figure, softly tending to the Christ child, and as an author, exemplifying the aforementioned "rhetoric of impossibility."

Botticelli's work highlights a clash in depicting the woman writer as a phenomenon, while simultaneously embracing a growing conversation of chance.

[2] Botticelli famously painted his female figures, especially his Madonnas, with incredibly pale, porcelain-like faces, with light pink blushing across their noses, cheeks, and mouths.

[6] This phase in Botticelli's art was also characterized by the combination of features typically found in court paintings, as well as qualities learned from his study of Classical works.

[8] Some experts have noted the cardiac anatomic accuracy of the pomegranate, which may further emphasize this suffering experienced by Jesus in his corporeal form.