Madonna and Child with Angels Carrying Candlesticks

What survives of this tondo is mostly a set of old photographs. Botticelli painted it in Florence around 1487, a circular Madonna and Child ringed by angels carrying tall candlesticks, and by the late 19th century it hung in Berlin's Gemaeldegalerie. When Allied bombing of the city grew heavy, the museum moved hundreds of its paintings into the flak tower at Friedrichshain, a concrete anti-aircraft bunker reckoned one of the safest places in Berlin. In the first days of May 1945, as the fighting ended, two fires broke out inside it. More than 400 paintings stored there were lost, and this Madonna was among them. Scholars now study it from black-and-white plates and a few early records, which is why its exact date is still argued over. Those candle-bearing angels, a motif Botticelli came back to more than once, are among the details we can still make out.