Adoration of the Christ Child

Filippino Lippi came to painting through loss and inheritance. His father was the friar-painter Fra Filippo Lippi, who died when Filippino was about 12, and the boy finished his training in the busy Florence workshop of Sandro Botticelli. This small round panel, painted around 1480, shows the Virgin kneeling in adoration before the newborn Christ laid on the ground, a tender private image of the kind Florentine families hung in their homes. The round format, the tondo, was popular there for just such domestic devotion. You can feel Botticelli in the clear line and the grave, gentle faces, though the mood is quieter and more inward than his master's.