Madonna Uffizi

In November 2015 a small panel traveled up from Milan to Florence and put back together something that had been in pieces for a long time. This enthroned Madonna and Child was once the center of a polyptych by Antonello da Messina. At some point the altarpiece was taken apart and its compartments scattered. The Uffizi had held this Madonna and a companion Saint John the Evangelist since 1996. The missing wing, a Saint Benedict owned by the Region of Lombardy, came south on a 15-year loan, and in exchange a Madonna by the painter Vincenzo Foppa went north to Milan. So the three surviving panels hang together again in the room of Venetian 15th-century painting, an arrangement meant to last until 2030.