Adoration of the Child with Saints Joseph, Jerome, Hilarion, Magdalene and Angels

Instead of a stable, Lippi sets the newborn Christ down on the bare ground of a rocky wilderness, on the edge of his mother's spread mantle, with the Virgin kneeling to adore him. It is a quiet, out-of-doors Nativity. Around them he gathers saints who lived in deserts of their own, Jerome beating his breast with a stone and Hilarion the hermit, along with Joseph and Mary Magdalene, while angels overhead hold a scroll reading Gloria in excelsis Deo. The picture was made in the mid-1450s for a convent in Florence, meant for women who had themselves withdrawn from the world. A cleaning in 2010 lifted away a darkened old varnish and brought back the freshness of its colour, the clear blues and the green of the grass that had been dimmed for generations.