Madonna is characteristic of Manierre Dawson’s “Cubist Transliterations,” a term coined by art historian Mary Mathews Gedo for the group of figurative paintings Dawson created in 1911-1912. The paintings appropriate subjects from historical European masterworks Dawson would have seen during his six-month European tour in 1910. In the present example, Dawson deftly reinterpreted the central figure of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1491-1508; The National Gallery, London). Employing the formal language gleaned from his civil engineering background in technical draftsmanship and stereometry, the artist produced innovative compositions, pared down to the elemental forms required to remain representational.