Filippino Lippi (Prato circa 1457-1504 Florence)

Saint John the Baptist was patron saint of Florence, and representations of him as a child were frequent in Florentine Renaissance art. He is shown here kneeling in a flowered meadow, dressed in a crimson robe and clasping a reed cross. In the background, beyond a small stream, rises a wooded hill surmounted by domed and spired buildings. On the far side of the stream, Saint Jerome prays before a crucifix, his lion by his side. X-ray examination of the panel has revealed that there was originally a recumbent infant Christ at lower right, which was subsequently painted over with the scroll and flowering bushes. The picture must therefore have once been part of a larger composition, most likely an Adoration of the Child. Zambrano and Nelson, authors of the most recent catalogue raisonné of Filippino's work, consider this an early work, datable to the late 1470s, closely comparable in figural typology and treatment of the landscape to the Madonna and Child with Young St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. 1412). The present picture was once in the collection of Tancred Borenius (1885-1948), a distinguished professor of art history at University College, London, and recognized in his day as one of the world's leading authorities on early Italian Renaissance painting.