The Virgin and Child with Saint John

In Florence around 1480 a small panel like this one was steady work for a painter. Pictures of the Virgin and Child with the young John the Baptist hung in the bedchambers of well-off households as an aid to prayer, and John, the patron saint of Florence, turns up in them often. Filippino Lippi's Mary stands behind a marble ledge, wrapped in a blue cloak lined with green, and looks down with a troubled face. The Child picks seeds from a split pomegranate, a fruit that stood for the suffering to come. John gazes up at him, holding a thin reed cross and clutching his red cloak. On the ledge lie an open book and a vase of pale flowers, perhaps a hint that Mary was the vessel who carried Christ. Far behind them, a towered city rises beyond a stand of tall young trees.