Madonna col Bambino, san Giovanni Battista e due angeli

Around 1470 a well-off Florentine family would want a picture like this on the wall of a private room, not for a church but for prayer at home, and also, frankly, to show visitors both their devotion and their means. The young Botticelli paints the Virgin and child with the infant John the Baptist and two angels close around them. One angel, crowned with roses, gazes up at Mary in open adoration. The other turns his head and looks directly out at you, as if he had just noticed you in the room. The panel spent centuries in a Florentine hospital, Santa Maria Nuova, before entering the Accademia's collection in 1900.