幼い洗礼者聖ヨハネを伴う聖母子、上空を舞う天使たち

Filippino Lippi painted this near the very end of his life. He died in Florence in 1504, and the panel belongs to his last couple of years. He was the son of a famous painter, the friar Filippo Lippi, and had trained in Botticelli's workshop, absorbing that master's flowing line before developing his own more restless, inventive manner. Here the Virgin bends over the Christ Child and the small John the Baptist while angels wheel through the sky above them. By 1500 Lippi was one of the busiest painters in Florence, at work in the same city as the young Michelangelo. The panel now hangs far from home, in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City.