Adoration of the Child

Round paintings like this one, called tondi, were a Florentine fashion around 1500, made mostly for the rooms of private houses rather than for church altars. This one is 140 centimetres across and dates from after 1510, late in Piero di Cosimo's working life. It rewards slow looking. Mary wears a star-shaped brooch on her blue mantle, a nod to the hymn Ave Maris Stella, which calls her the star of the sea. A white dove perches on the beam of the window, and through that opening Joseph leads the ox and the donkey across a hilly landscape. The Child hugs a small cross and lies on a white cloth, both pointing ahead to the Passion. For centuries the Borghese inventories gave the picture to other painters, Raphael among them, until the critic Gustavo Frizzoni recognised Piero's hand in 1880.