La Vierge à l'Enfant avec un ange

Around 1470 the young Botticelli was still building his name, and one steady line of work in Florence was the household Madonna. Well-off families wanted devotional pictures for their own rooms, and painters turned them out by the dozen. This is one of his, sweet and calm at first glance, but look at what the three of them are gazing at: a bowl of grapes threaded with ears of wheat. Grapes make wine, wheat makes bread, and together they point straight to the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ, so the baby is already being shown his end. Centuries later the American collector Isabella Stewart Gardner bought it on the advice of Bernard Berenson, paying a small fortune to bring it to Boston.