A Renaissance Masterpiece Revealed: Filippino Lippi's Madonna and Child March 4, 2011

Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) is one of the great artists of 15th-century Florence. Among his principal patrons was the wealthy banker Filippo Strozzi (1428-1491), who in 1487 contracted the artist to decorate his funerary chapel in Santa Maria Novella with an outstanding cycle of frescoes. Around the same time, Strozzi also commissioned a Madonna and Child for his villa at Santuccio, west of the city. This work was acquired from the Duveen firm in 1928 by Jules Bache and was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum in 1949. In preparation for an exhibition on the artist that will be held in Rome next year, the picture was taken to conservation for examination this fall. A test cleaning revealed that beneath a thick, discolored varnish there was a beautifully preserved, richly colored painting. So striking is the transformation that the picture seems a new acquisition. To celebrate this restoration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is mounting 'A Renaissance Masterpiece Revealed: Filippino Lippi's Madonna and Child,' a focused exhibition that will include the picture and a number of objects in the Museum's permanent collection that can be associated with the Strozzi by their coat of arms, which has three crescent moons. The objects include a textile, a wooden chair, a cassone, and a column capital from the Palazzo Strozzi.