Holy Family with the Infant Saint John

Agnolo Doni was a rich Florentine wool merchant who knew whom to hire. In the years around 1505 Raphael painted portraits of him and his wife Maddalena, and Michelangelo painted a round Holy Family for the couple, the panel known today as the Doni Tondo. In 1516 Doni went back to the same subject with another painter, Fra Bartolomeo, the Dominican friar of San Marco, and ordered this Holy Family for the chapel of his house in Florence.

The friar built it on strict geometry. The figures sit in the middle of the panel and form a triangle, with Joseph's face at its tip. Mary and the Child are joined by the young John the Baptist, a boy here rather than a baby. Around that ordered group he put small things to find. There are daisies in the foreground, and in the background the Nativity and the arrival of the little John. On the wall behind Mary, in small letters, are his signature and the date 1516.

Two centuries later Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini bought the panel and spent more than 500 scudi to give it a place in the main gallery of his apartment.