The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic

This altarpiece was painted around 1485 for the Rucellai, a rich Florentine merchant family, for their chapel in the church of San Pancrazio. Their coats of arms still sit at both ends of the base, on either side of a small dead Christ between Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene. Above, the Virgin sits on the ground in open country and nurses the Child. Saint Jerome kneels on one side, holding the stone he used in penance, and Saint Dominic reads on the other, a white lily in his hand. Filippino filled the background with small incidents. In the oak tree behind Mary a coal tit feeds its own young, a lion drives off an intruding bear, Jerome appears a second time praying in a cave, and Joseph leads a donkey. The heavy gilt frame is a 19th-century reproduction of what may have been the original.