The Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist

Around 1490 Botticelli's Florence held the busiest painting workshops in Europe, and images like this were part of their everyday trade, devotional panels made for private homes rather than churches, so a family could pray before the Virgin and Child in their own rooms. The extra child here, the small John the Baptist, is not just any saint. John was the patron of Florence itself, and Florentines liked to picture him as a playmate of the infant Christ, folding their city into the holy family. Botticelli painted the tender faces and thin veils that are his signature, while assistants in his shop often laid in the rest. In these same years a friar named Savonarola began preaching in the city, and Botticelli, by some accounts, fell under his spell.