Vierge à l'Enfant avec saint Antoine de Padoue et un moine

Filippino Lippi grew up inside Florentine painting. His father was the monk-painter Fra Filippo Lippi, and after his father's death the boy went into the workshop of Botticelli, whose sweetness you can feel in a small devotional panel like this one. It was made around 1480, when Filippino was still in his early twenties and Florence belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici. The Virgin holds the Child between Saint Anthony of Padua, the Franciscan preacher, and a kneeling friar at prayer. That friar is almost certainly the man who paid for the picture, tucked into holy company at the edge of the scene, which is how a modest patron had himself remembered in front of a painting he could keep at home.