Angel Playing the Lute

This little angel, frowning in concentration over a lute almost too big for him to hold, is only a surviving scrap of a much larger picture. Rosso Fiorentino painted it around 1521 in Florence, where he and his friend Pontormo were pushing painting toward the strange, restless style later called Mannerism. At some point the altarpiece it belonged to was broken up, and only this fragment came through. Modern infrared study found the date and Rosso's name hidden under the dark paint of the background, though nobody is certain whether he wrote them himself or someone added them later when the panel was cut down. What survives is a very human moment, a child not quite in command of his instrument.