Madonna Adoring the Child with Five Angels

Round paintings like this one, which the Italians call tondi, were popular in Florentine homes in the 1480s, made for a bedroom or a family chapel rather than a church. Botticelli ran a busy workshop turning them out, and versions of his Madonnas were repeated for different patrons. Here the Virgin kneels to adore her own newborn son while five angels press in close around them, the whole scene curved to fit the circle. It was painted in tempera on a wood panel. Much later it belonged to Mary Frick Jacobs, a Baltimore collector, and came to the city's museum with the rest of her pictures.