Madonna and Child with an Angel

Description Images of the Madonna and Child enjoyed great popularity in the Italian Renaissance home. In this example, painted by an anonymous Florentine artist working in the 1490s, the Madonna tenderly supports the Christ Child as he stands on a ledge before her. In the lower right, an adoring angel offers a bowl of flowers; at the left, a window opens onto a hilly landscape where the hermit Saint Jerome is doing penitence before a crucifix. Farther in the distance is the Archangel Raphael with the young Tobias, commonly venerated as protectors of travelers and against disease.

Provenance Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1881 catalogue: no. 36, as Fra Filippo Lippi; 1897 catalogue: no. 74, as Florentine School, around 1500]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Seal] On reverse of panel: red wax seal with coat of arms; [Number] On reverse in black paint: #73

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902