Anbetung im Walde

In 1459 the Medici had just finished their grand new palace in Florence, and for the private chapel at its heart they commissioned this altarpiece from Fra Filippo Lippi. It is a strange, quiet Nativity. Instead of a Bethlehem stable there is a dark, northern-looking forest, the ground littered with cut branches and a tree stump, and the Virgin kneels to adore a newborn who lies among wildflowers on the bare earth. Every element was chosen with care for a room where the family prayed alone. The panel left Italy during the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars and has hung in Berlin since 1821, while a copy now stands in the Medici chapel it was made for. In 2026 the Berlin original went into a two-year restoration.