Madonna and Child with Five Angels

This tondo comes from the start of Botticelli's career, around 1470, when he was a young Florentine painter recently out of the workshop of Filippo Lippi. The round format was a favourite for private devotion in wealthy Florentine homes, hung in a bedroom or study rather than a church. Mary bows her head toward the Christ child while five angels press close around them, their faces already carrying the wistful softness Botticelli would become known for. The handling is still gentle and a little tentative here. He would return to this circular grouping of Virgin, child and clustered angels many times over the next 20 years, most famously in the crowded Madonna of the Magnificat now in the Uffizi in Florence.