Madonna con Bambino e san Giovanni Battista

In Florence around 1490 a round painting like this had a specific place. It was made for a home rather than a church, and hung in the room of a Florentine family as an object of daily prayer. The round shape, the tondo, was fashionable for exactly that use, and Botticelli's busy workshop turned out many of them. The child John the Baptist who leans in at the side was no random saint here. He was the patron of Florence itself, so setting him beside the Virgin and Child spoke to local pride as much as to piety. Botticelli designed the composition and his assistants carried out much of the painting, which is why these tender, slightly wistful Madonnas survive in several collections. This one, in tempera and gold on a panel nearly three feet across, is now in Williamstown, Massachusetts.