Madonna and Child

Spanish painting was rare in Florentine collections, and this canvas took a roundabout road to reach one. Murillo made it in Seville in the early 1650s, the years when he was turning out Virgins with the Child for the city's churches and for private houses, on a smaller and warmer scale than his altarpieces. The gallery reckons it the quieter of his versions of the subject, less monumental than the others of the same stretch. How it travelled is only half known. Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Lorraine is thought to have obtained it from a convent in Ypres, in Flanders, at some point before 1822, and it has been on show at Pitti under Murillo's name since 1828. It hangs in the Hall of Mars, beneath a ceiling Pietro da Cortona frescoed for the Medici in the 1640s.