25 Famous Paintings to See the Next Time You’re in Florence

Max Liebermann was born in Berlin to a rich Jewish family at a time when Jews were oppressed. He was a young adult when laws were changed in 1871 and Jews were granted the same rights as other German citizens. His Realist paintings depicted working people as they actually were—not idealized or denigrated—and were seen as subversive. In the German parliament, Liebermann’s Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple (1879) was condemned as blasphemous because his Jesus was said to be “too Jewish looking.” In Self-Portrait (in the Uffizi), Liebermann shows himself as a confident, determined man. The background of palette, easel, and cloth is painted impressionistically, but his own image is painted in a more realistic style—he is the main focus, the viewer must not be distracted by anything. After Liebermann’s death, the Hitler regime removed his works from German art galleries. (Lucinda Hawksley)

A member of the Florentine School, Andrea del Castagno was commissioned to paint the Cycle of Famous Men and Women at the Villa Carducci in Legnaia no later than June 1449, when Filippo Carducci, owner of the villa, died. The Cycle (now in the Uffizi) consists of nine portraits placed inside individual niches painted like monumental marble recesses and separated by pilasters. It features three Florentine military commanders (Farinata degli Uberti, Pippo Spano, and Niccolò Acciaiuoli), three famous women (the Cumaean Sibyl, Queen Esther, and Queen Tomyris), and three Tuscan poets (Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio). The elaborate architectural decoration of the ceiling and the walls emphasizes the monumentality of the figures. These austere figures, based on models by Masaccio and Giotto, give the viewer an exalted representation of the desirable qualities of Renaissance man: physical strength, moral virtue, and a keen intellect. All nine figures appear to be looking and gesturing toward each other. Boccaccio, the Italian poet and scholar best remembered as the author of the Decameron, is the final figure and appears as a colored and draped lifelike statue set along the wall for the viewer to observe. He is shown holding a leather-bound volume and looking at Petrarch, emphasizing the fact that both men helped elevate vernacular literature to the level of the classics of antiquity and served as iconic Renaissance models worthy of emulation. (Anna Amari-Parker)

The Death of Adonis was painted by Sebastiano del Piombo in the early part of his career, when he was still working within the school of Venetian art. He was influenced by his teacher Giorgione, the master of Venetian Renaissance painting. This painting deals with the classical myth of Adonis, a beautiful youth who captures the heart of Venus before dying but is later resurrected. As Venus is told of his death, handmaidens entreat Pan to stop playing his pipes at this sad moment. The composition—idealized nudes in the foreground against a serene landscape—echoes Giorgione’s work, as does the typically Venetian feeling for rich color and light. Del Piombo’s palette is beautifully harmonized, but already there is a hint of the more subdued colors that he would later adopt. In this painting, which is part of the Uffizi’s collection, there is a lovely, gentle interplay of light—from the sheen on human skin, to the soft reflections in the lake. However, there is more to this painting than Giorgione’s influence. Del Piombo’s off-center figure grouping, turning heads, and pointing fingers give much more movement than in earlier Renaissance works. His technical skills are such that each nude forms a marvelous life study. These nudes have a statuesque monumentality that del Piombo developed from the Renaissance interest in sculpture. He took this much further in the second half of his career, when he had settled in Rome. (Ann Kay)

Inspired by Italian masters of the High Renaissance, Titian was considered a master within the accomplished artistic circles of 16th-century Venice. He has also been cited as the first Venetian painter to earn international standing. He painted anonymous “courtesan” portraits, as well as altarpieces and mythological paintings. As a prolific portraitist, he produced flattering yet recognizably human likenesses of such prominent figures as the pope and the doge, yet, despite the range of his prestigious commissions, Venus of Urbino (in the Uffizi) is arguably his masterpiece. In his 1880 travel diary, A Tramp Abroad, American author Mark Twain described the painting as “the foulest, the vilest, the most obscene picture the world possesses.” Allegorical touches, such as the clothed female figures in the background and the puppy asleep at Venus’s feet, have led to thorough iconographic readings of the painting, but perhaps Twain’s prudish reaction was closer to Titian’s real intentions. The unselfconscious desire in the model’s direct expression might have offended Twain, but her lovely, lustful gaze has also seduced countless viewers. Titian’s breathtaking talent and his bold depiction of female sexuality is why this painting is often cited as the grandmother of many of Western art’s most controversial images—including Édouard Manet’s Olympia—and considered a model of empowered female sexuality as well as a precursor to the pinup. (Ana Finel Honigman)

Dosso Dossi was a somewhat eccentric proponent of the High Renaissance style known as Mannerism, noted less for its naturalism than its complex, fantastical subjects and cryptic symbolism, often impenetrable to the modern mind. In 1514, heavily influenced by Giorgione and Titian, he became court artist for Duke Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara. A Renaissance center for culture and refinement, the court employed Giovanni Bellini and Titian. Within this rich environment, Dosso painted complex mythological and literary works to appeal to the courtly scholars. Sorcery, or the Allegory of Hercules (in the Uffizi) is a curious example of this dense symbolism; its meaning is much debated. Some view the work as an allegory to Alfonso’s son Ercole, via his namesake Hercules. It may also warn against the seductions of courtly life, a touch of humor that the Este court would have embraced. An elderly Hercules focuses morosely on two stone spheres, ignoring his teasing companions. A smiling young man presents a distaff, symbolizing Hercules’s feminine subjugation to Queen Omphale, while the light falls on a bare-chested woman bearing fruit. A tambourine and mask on the table hint at earthly love and frivolous pastimes. A buoyant colorist, Dosso skillfully rendered flesh and musculature. While the male faces fall just short of caricature, the females are purely classical. With frequent visits to Rome and Venice, Dosso learned to emulate Michelangelo, Raphael, and Correggio, yet he produced some of the most original, if mysterious, works of his era. (Susan Flockhart)

Annibale Carracci, his brother Agostino, and their cousin Ludovico formed one of the most important artistic family groups of the 16th century. The three artists, who opened their own academy in the 1580s, placed great importance on basic draftsmanship as fundamental to painting, and worked in a manner that combined the sensuous palette of the Venetian school with the linear quality of the Florentines. The sumptuous goddess of love in Venus with a Satyr and Cupids (in the Uffizi) demonstrates Carracci’s exquisite detailing and the particular skill the artist had for life drawing. It is his grasp of the actual figure and his understanding of the folds of flesh and structure of bone that make this composition, and indeed his painting as a whole, so convincing. His use of rich colors and his attention to the different textural qualities, visible in the sheen of Venus’s tightly coiled hair, the velvet of the cushion, the smooth folds of the silken cloth, and the warm blush of her skin, make this painting instantly captivating. It is a work that pervades the senses, and it is simultaneously coy and provocative. The work of Carracci in particular was of great importance to successive artists, and he can be credited with having started a number of different artistic trends. He is, for example, thought to have been one of the first artists to have used caricature, which can be seen in his early genre paintings, and his monumental and heroic figures in fresco were widely copied, becoming something of a standard for this type of character depiction. (Tamsin Pickeral)

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, often called “The Good Chardin” in contemporary critical literature, was born in Paris, the son of a master cabinetmaker. A lifelong resident of his native Paris, he was at a disadvantage as a painter because, while other artists favored splashy history paintings and fashionable portraits of fashionable people, his talents lay in overlooked and undervalued subject matter such as still lifes and genre scenes. Chardin’s technique—he uses paint as if it were pastels—and formal concerns (composition, color, texture) are at their most remarkable in Girl with Racket and Shuttlecock (in the Uffizi), in which a young girl absentmindedly toys with a badminton racket and a feathered shuttlecock. There is no overt drama in the painting; in fact she seems bored herself, as if waiting for her partner to get ready and play the game, yet the interplay of soft hues and surfaces is mesmerizing. The blush on her cheeks and the velvety fabric of her dress and billowy skirt are all in perfect harmony with, yet perfectly distinct from, the space surrounding her and the wood of her racket and chair. The more political and rigorous Neoclassical artists of the day dismissed Chardin as a fluffy sentimentalist, but, instead of his humble interests hampering his talent, he elevated banal objects and everyday scenes to a height where latter-day intellectual greats, such as Marcel Proust and Henri Matisse, were proud to admit they admired his art. Most viewers are still struck by the smoothness of his surfaces and by his breathtaking, sensual rendering of mundane objects. (Ana Finel Honigman)

Angelica Kauffmann enjoyed greater status than was usual for 18th-century female artists. Born in Switzerland but having lived in Italy, she was well versed in classical and Renaissance art and architecture. Women artists were restricted to still lifes and portraiture, but Kauffmann refused to be confined to these areas. She was interested in the women of myth and history such as Helen, Venus, and Cleopatra. Her history paintings were criticized at the time, and they have been since, for their disregard for the heroism of Neoclassicism. Kauffmann produced many self-portraits to engage the attention of prospective patrons. In this portrait (in the Uffizi), she looks away from the viewer, a green ribbon in her loose hair. The white robe suggests Roman dress, but in the Neoclassical style it is caught above the waist with a belt. Seated between pillars with open views to mountains, she holds the tools of her trade. (Wendy Osgerby)

A national institution in his homeland, Carl Larsson rose from miserable childhood poverty to become a leading Swedish artist. His great success rested on paintings of an idealized domestic life he shared with his wife, Karin, and their children. The couple designed a home at their farm in the village of Sundborn that combined Swedish folk charm with artistic sophistication. Printed versions of these pictures, and Larsson’s cheery accompanying stories, reached a wide public. They loved what they saw as a return to traditional Swedish country life. Self-Examination, however, hints that the idyll was not perfect. Larsson presses up against the front of the picture, in close self-examination, with a quietly grim expression. He grasps a macabre doll with pent-up force. Karin is in the background, closeted away behind a window, her face partly obscured. These two people, apparently the most loving of couples, seem shut off from one another in their own isolated worlds. No one knows whether Karin felt resentful at giving up her earlier career as a painter to become a wife and mother—albeit a highly creative one. Yet it seems fairly certain that Larsson sometimes felt trapped by his wife, by repeatedly painting the interiors she created, and by the public expectation that he would go on doing the same thing. Whatever lies behind this painting (which is part of the Uffizi’s collection), Larsson considered this his most successful self-portrait. It shows his talents as a draftsman and painter, often overlooked by those who see his pictures as just another example of sentimental Victorian art. (Ann Kay)

Commissioned as a ceremonial shield by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, the Medici family’s agent in Rome, Head of the Medusa was presented to Ferdinand I de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, in 1601. For its subject matter, Caravaggio drew on the Greek myth of Medusa, a woman with snakes for hair who turned people to stone by looking at them. According to the story, she was killed by Perseus, who avoided direct eye contact by using a mirrored shield. After Medusa’s death, her decapitated head continued to petrify those that looked at it. Caravaggio plays with this concept by modeling himself for Medusa’s face—making him the only one who is safe from Medusa’s deadly gaze—and having to look at his reflection to paint the shield in the same way that Medusa caught her own image moments before being killed. Although Caravaggio depicts Medusa’s severed head, she remains conscious. He heightens this combination of life and death through Medusa’s intense expression. Her wide-open mouth exudes a silent but dramatic scream, and her shocked eyes and furrowed brow all suggest a sense of disbelief, as if she thought herself to be invincible until that moment. But Caravaggio’s Medusa does not have the full effect of scaring the viewer, since she does not look at us, thereby transferring the power of the gaze to the viewer and emphasizing her demise. Caravaggio displays huge technical achievements in this work (which is in the Uffizi) by making a convex surface look concave and Medusa’s head appear to project outward. (William Davies)

The year 1472 offers the first record that we have of Leonardo “the artist” when he enrolls in Florence’s illustrious confraternity of painters, joining the ranks of artists such as Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Perugino. There is no doubt that Leonardo da Vinci’s apprenticeship under Andrea del Verrocchio, a member as well, would have provided an entrée into the society. At some point during this period, Leonardo would have had to produce a veritable masterpiece in his own right. His ambitious first attempt is The Annunciation. Given the disparate ambitions of this image—from the meditative landscape to the dense drapery studies—one cannot fault the precocious artist’s efforts. In 1867 the painting was moved to the Uffizi from the monastery of San Bartolomeo a Monte Oliveto in the Tuscan countryside. This somber panel by the young Leonardo certainly places him, at least in the subject’s traditional layout, in direct lineage with his Florentine painterly tradition. The dainty fingers of the Virgin have irritated some critics who malign the feature for having come directly from Verrocchio’s circle. Others complain about the lack of emotional intensity characteristic of the mature Leonardo. The right hand of the Virgin secures her place in the scriptures as the angel interrupts her. We might even see this inventive gesture as a first foreshadowing of Leonardo’s use of hand placement—consider his depiction of the Apostles’ reaction to the announcement of betrayal in his epic version of The Last Supper. (Steven Pulimood)

A moth sits beside a wicker basket containing a profusion of roses, tulips, primulas, and daisies. It is the work of a female artist, not in itself uncommon in 18th-century Holland, and the subject matter, a floral still life, was highly popular. The paintings, as here, often had insects such as caterpillars and butterflies included to enhance the naturalism of the image. Rachel Ruysch was the most celebrated Dutch flower painter of her day. Born in Haarlem, Ruysch studied with the flower painter Willem van Aelst. She was one of several female flower painters inspired by Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Baroque floral still lifes some 50 years before. Women were not allowed to attend life-drawing classes and were thought unable to paint portraits or historical scenes with figures, which were viewed as activities for men. Hence women focused on paintings of flowers, which were deemed a suitable domestic subject. Her choice of subject matter may also have been influenced by her upbringing, since her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a botanist. Given paintings such as these often included flowers that would rarely be in bloom at the same time, and flowers also quickly wilt, painters would use botanical illustrations as an aid when painting. The painting itself is a vanitas, with references to death and the emptiness of life. Such still-life paintings were admired and sought after at this time in Dutch society, as the emerging merchant class had the money to spend on objects that would reflect their own wealth. Flowers and Insects is in the collection of the Uffizi. (James Harrison)

Tomasso Portinari—a wealthy Italian businessman and representative of the Medici family in Bruges—commissioned this spectacular altarpiece for his family chapel in Florence. Evidently wanting to impress at home and to commemorate his success in Flanders, Portinari selected Hugo van der Goes for the job. Van der Goes produced a masterpiece that was not only a suitably grand tribute to Portinari but a highly personal interpretation of the Nativity. The large altarpiece (in the Uffizi) represents the adoration of the holy family and the shepherds according to the account given by Luke (2:10–19). The central scene celebrates the joy at the birth of Christ, but at the same time it emphasizes the humility of the family and the peasants. The artist reintroduced an archaic hierarchy of scale—the holy family appears largest and the donors and angels smaller in comparison. The figures are arranged in diagonal axes around Mary, whose hands are the center of the composition. This unusual composition produces a slightly unbalanced, dynamic movement. The angle of the floor in the central panel might reflect the practice of contemporary religious theater. The stage floor has been tilted up for a better view, and the figures are clothed in costumes worthy of a mystery play. The donors kneel on the side wings and are flanked by their patron saints. In this extraordinary work, van der Goes managed to fuse Jan van Eyck’s astonishing illusionism with Rogier van der Weyden’s monumentality as well as the naturalism of Dierec Bouts’s landscapes. (Emilie E.S. Gordenker)

Duccio was one of the most important painters to emerge during Siena’s heyday in the 13th century. Duccio painted in the traditional Byzantine style, but he introduced innovations that began the transition to the genre now known as International Gothic. The Rucellai Madonna altarpiece was commissioned by a Dominican lay confraternity devoted to the Virgin. It was installed in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Originally placed above the altar, the Ruccellai Madonna was later moved to the Ruccellai chapel within Santa Maria Novella, from where it acquired its name. Duccio’s interpretation of the Madonna and Child theme reveals an emphasis on form that is not seen in earlier Madonnas by other artists. The bodies of the Madonna and the infant Christ are given realistic treatment, and Duccio makes good use of chiaroscuro (light and dark shading) to create the illusion of three-dimensionality. The Christ child sits convincingly in the Madonna’s lap and gestures toward his mother—both innovative developments in paintings of this kind during this era. However, the Byzantine style is apparent in the surrounding angels, which seem to float in space, and in the typically Byzantine medallions, featuring figures from the bible, on the gilded frame. The Rucellai Madonna is part of the Uffizi’s collection. (Mary Cooch)

Birth of Venus is one of the most famous paintings in the world. It was painted bySandro Botticelli, who was an Italian painter of the Florentine school. He served an apprenticeship under Fra Filippo Lippi, the best Florentine painter of that time. Botticelli made his name with his painting Allegory of Fortitude (1470), and he was subsequently commissioned to paint Birth of Venus for Lorenzo the Magnificent of the Medici family. In mythology, Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the god Uranus, whose severed genitals fertilized the sea. Birth of Venus (in the Uffizi) depicts the moment when, having emerged from the sea in a shell, Venus lands at Paphos in Cyprus. She is attended by two winds who blow her toward the shore, while a nymph is poised to wrap a cloak, decorated with spring flowers, around Venus to cover her nudity. The stance of Venus is believed to be based on classical statuary, which was highly prized in Florence at that time. Despite the strange proportions of her body—the elongated neck and her overlong left arm—Venus is an arrestingly beautiful figure with her delicate skin and soft-flowing curls fresh from the sea. She is born to the world as the goddess of beauty, and the viewer is witness to this act of creation. She steps off a gilded scallop shell, the winds shower her with roses—each with a golden heart—and the orange blossom on the tree behind her is also tipped with gold. Historically, this is the most important depicted nude since classical antiquity. (Mary Cooch)

Gazing toward each other across the centuries in front of a luminous landscape (the earliest landscape background in Italian Renaissance portaiture) are Federico da Montefeltro, powerful ruler of the city-state of Urbino, and his young wife, Battista Sforza. These paintings were probably intended to be hinged together to form a diptych. On the back of the panels Piero della Francesca painted the couple set in allegorical landscapes, sitting on triumphal chariots. These are Piero’s only known portraits. He depicts the sitters in absolute profile—painted versions of a Renaissance medal, as was the fashion at the time. Both realistic and idealized, each profile is held within a perfectly drawn outline. Dressed in bright red court clothes and hat of state, Federico is shown warts and all, with skin blemishes and a hook nose damaged in a tournament. The same incident badly disfigured the right side of his face, which Piero has diplomatically hidden from view. Despite the realism of her exquisite coiffure, brocaded dress, and glinting string of pearls, Battista’s face itself has an unearthly quality. It may be that Piero took her likeness from her death mask, for Battista died young. She married Federico when she was 14, and after producing eight daughters in 11 years, she offered her life to God in exchange for a son. In 1472 the longed-for son was born; six months later Battista died of pneumonia. Although scholars still debate the dating of this double portrait (in the Uffizi), it is likely that it is one of the works that Federico commissioned as a memorial to his wife. (Jude Welton)

Outside his work as a court painter to memorialize Lorenzo the Magnificent’s victories, the deeply religious Sandro Botticelli was fascinated by both Christian and pagan epics. This pious image was perhaps created for the Priory of Santo Spirito, the only convent for Augustinian hermits in Florence. Although Augustine was never a monk, here he wears a cope of a bishop over the robe of their fraternal order. The subject’s peaceful affection for monastic life is clearly evoked in the calm demeanor in which the saint looks patiently upon his writing table. The small scale of the image and the drawn curtain emphasize the enclosed, devotional air of the penitent monk at work. At the foot of the panel, which is in the Uffizi, wispy scraps of paper lie scattered. This is a humbling reminder that even Augustine, one of the great authors in Christendom, had to revise several times in order to write meaningfully. (Steven Pulimood)

Despite the religious themes of Fra Filippo Lippi’s paintings—in part because he was an ordained priest, and in part because this was the primary style of art in 15th-century Florence—Lippi’s paintings are always full of human interest. He imbues each character with a personality normally absent from strictly religious scenes. Painted toward the end of Lippi’s life, Adoration of the Child with St. Bernard (in the Uffizi) is a scene of great religious symbolism. St. Bernard lived in the 12th century and remains one of the most important religious figures of his time. St. Bernard is often described as having begun “the cult of the Virgin,” and he was largely responsible for the Virgin Mary’s prominent position in the church. Lippi painted him on more than one occasion, most famously in his Saint Bernard’s Vision of the Virgin (c.1447). Lippi had been a keen follower of the painter Tomaso di Giovanni, known as Masaccio. Masaccio died mysteriously at a young age—he left Florence for Rome and was never heard of again—but his work continued to inspire other Florentine artists after his death. Lippi’s own style changed direction after 1440, becoming uniquely linear and using an increasing amount of decorative motifs. Lippi was also among the first artists to paint in the form of tondo—a circular canvas often depicting the Virgin and Child. Lippi and the nun Lucretia Buti’s son, the painter Filippino Lippi, learned his craft alongside the young Botticelli, and it is likely that it was Lippi who taught them both. (Lucinda Hawksley)

After training as a goldsmith, Sandro Botticelli was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi. Lippi had developed a style of portraying expressive interactions between figures, and he employed highly decorative detailing inherited from the late Gothic period. Botticelli was also influenced by Antonio Pollaiuolo, whose muscular modeling announced a new approach to figurative work accounting for human anatomy and proportion. Botticelli painted on many scales, and his delicate evocations of landscape and figuration ensure his place as one of the most beloved painters of all time. Primavera (Spring) commemorated the Florentine Renaissance—a cultural, political, and economic rebirth of the republic. The painting originally hung in the summerhouse of the Medici family as a companion piece to The Birth of Venus. (It is now in the Uffizi.) In Primavera, Botticelli has created a lively scene that includes, from left to right, the mythological figures Mercury; the Three Graces; Venus, goddess of love; the nymph Chloris; Flora, goddess of fecundity; and the west wind Zephyr. Above them, Cupid, the god of erotic love, aims his dart at the Three Graces. Some scholars have argued that the painting is an example of Botticelli’s interest in Neoplatonism—a blending of pagan and Christian identities. However, it is probable that he painted this mythological scene because he was commissioned to do so by the Medicis, whose interest in classical history and art influenced many painters of this time. (Steven Pulimood)

Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his elder brother Pietro belonged to the 14th-century Sienese School of painting dominated by the stylized Byzantine tradition developed by Duccio di Buoninsegna and Simone Martini. While Pietro was more traditional than his sibling, and showed a propensity for harmony, refinement, and dramatic emotion, Ambrogio proved more realistic, inventive, and influential. The Four Stories from the Life of St. Nicholas of Bari altarpiece was executed for the Church of St. Procolo in Florence. Painted during the artist’s second visit to the city between 1327 and 1332, it presents all the components of Ambrogio’s creativity—the influence of Byzantine art and the plasticity of duecento Sienese relief. Conceived as the upper section of a side panel of a now dismembered triptych that would originally have had the Madonna and Child at the center, one of the vignettes shows St. Nicholas reviving a child from his deathbed while other children are being carried away by black angels of death. The scene has great narrative power and affords the viewer a glimpse of contemporary interiors, down to details such as the bed covers and tablecloths. Other scenes tell other stories. The composition foreshadows the art of the Renaissance. It is as remarkable for its vivid depiction of life, custom, and 14th-century Sienese architecture as for its extraordinary command of structure and the control of three-dimensionality and spatial arrangements. The panels are in the collection of the Uffizi. (Anna Amari-Parker)

Simone Martini, pupil of Duccio and one of the most original and influential artists of the Sienese school, built on techniques developed by his teacher to show three-dimensionality, but he elevated them in his own work by adding a more refined contour of line, grace of expression, and serenity of mood as his signature. Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus was created as an altarpiece for the Saint Ansano Chapel inside Siena Cathedral. It was executed by the artist and Lippo Memmi, his brother-in-law, to whom are attributed the lateral figures—St. Ansanus, patron of Siena, and a martyr (though scholars often credit everything to Simone). In the central panel, the archangel Gabriel and the Virgin enhance the triptych’s Gothic nature. Narrative details are implicit in the various symbols—the pot of lilies symbolize Mary’s purity; the olive branch, God’s peaceful message; and, between the two figures, a rosette of cherubs surrounding a dove indicates the presence of the Holy Spirit. The gold-relief inscription emanating from the angel’s mouth contains the words Ave gratia plena dominus tecum (“Greetings, most favored one! The Lord is with thee”). In a break from conventional religious iconography, Mary is visibly shrinking in fear. The Annunciation (in the Uffizi) is perhaps the most splendid example of craftsmanship ever produced in Siena. Elaborately tooled in burnished and matte gold, it is a remarkable achievement in the use of outline for the sake of linear rhythm, two-dimensional pattern, and sophisticated enamel color harmonies. (Anna Amari-Parker)

Brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti—both said to have perished in the Black Death—were 14th-century Sienese painters who played a vital part in transforming early Italian Renaissance painting. Like Ambrogio, Pietro developed a style that moved away from the elegant Byzantine tradition toward the naturalism of the great Florentine painter Giotto. Pietro’s altarpiece was originally housed in the women’s convent of San Giovanni Evangelista, in the northern Italian town of Faenza. (Most of it is now in the Uffizi.) It tells the story of the life and miracles of Santa Beata Umiltà (St. Humility), an Italian abbess who founded two convents of the Vallumbrosan order during the 13th century. One panel (middle row, second from right) depicts Santa Umiltà’s arrival in Florence to build the second of these convents, and it shows her being guided toward the task by St. John the Evangelist. The figures in the various panels have the new kind of solidity for which the Lorenzetti brothers are famed, with a naturalistic, strongly sculptural quality. The scenes have been carefully constructed, with Pietro displaying convincing spatial illusion, architectural features that are attractively rendered, and an astute awareness of three-dimensional perspective. Pietro was a master of color, and the whole altarpiece is subtly harmonized and imbued with a gentle serenity. (Ann Kay)

Filippino Lippi was trained by his father Fra Filippo Lippi and, after his father’s death in 1469, by Sandro Botticelli. This is an early painting and still shows the influence of his father as well as that of his master. The subject is the adoration of the child by the Virgin, a representation demonstrating the humanizing of holy figures, which happened during the Renaissance. The tenderness between mother and child is moving; she is no longer depicted as a remote and inaccessible figure, and her face is reminiscent of the face of Lippi’s own mother, Lucretia Buti, who appears in many of Fra Filippo’s paintings. Although Adoration is likely to have been painted before Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1477–78) arrived in Florence, creating enormous artistic interest, there are significant references to Flemish painting, in particular the sparkling “carpet” of flowers and the background landscape. Both may have been inspired by Leonardo’s adoption of such northern features. His Annunciation (c. 1472), for example, also depicts a harbor in the background. Mary is known as “Star of the Sea” and is consequently associated with water. The harbor also symbolizes eternal life. The parapet wall—also a feature of both paintings—suggests an enclosed garden, a reference to Mary’s virginity. At this stage Lippi had not adopted Leonardo’s technique of sfumato, but he had reduced his dependence on Botticelli’s linearity. (Wendy Osgerby)

This mature work, painted for the church of San Giusto near Florence, dates from the years that show Perugino at his most productive peak—roughly 1490 to 1500. It is one of his greatest paintings and, content-wise, sits squarely within the tradition of Christian Pietà images. These images depict Christ after his death, his body supported by his mother, the Virgin Mary, and often surrounded, as here, by other figures, such as Mary Magdalene, who sits at his feet. Perugino’s Pietà appears simple, but it is ingeniously constructed to produce a moving tribute and a pious, reflective mood. The artist organizes his space with extreme precision. In the foreground is a carefully arranged group, with each member striking a graceful pose. The painting shows a rich overall coloration and balanced lighting that characterizes Perugino’s work. The idealized figures have a statuesque solidity that, appropriately for the theme, lends them great presence. Perugino’s harmonious compositions and sculptural figures had a great impact on Raphael, who worked in Perugino’s studio as a young man and would take what he had learned from his master forward into the High Renaissance. Peruigino’s painting is in the collection of the Uffizi. (Ann Kay)

Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence and eventually became an apprentice to the Florentine master Fra Filippo Lippi. Botticelli later befriended Cosimo de’ Medici’s famous grandson Lorenzo, known as “Il Magnifico.” Botticelli was among the most important artists to be commissioned by Lorenzo and began an era that the artists’ biographer Giorgio Vasari later called the Golden Age. It is known that Botticelli painted this picture for his own keeping. It is his last surviving image that depicts a scene from secular history. The theme was a description by a classical Greek writer, Lucian, of a painting by a classical Greek painter, Apelles. Apelles’s painting was a response to an accusation by another painter, Antiphilos, that Apelles was involved in a plot against the king. Antiphilos repeated this to the geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, who believed the calumny. When a key witness testified to Apelles’s innocence, Ptolemy awarded Apelles damages, which included Antiphilos as his personal slave and recompense of one hundred talents. Yet the painter “revenged himself with an allegorical picture.” Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles (in the Uffizi) was painted following Lucian’s detailed description. Unlike other works by Botticelli, such as Primavera and Birth of Venus, the intimate scale of this work belies its rich, finely wrought detail. To the right is a man with the ears of an ass welcoming the beautiful Calumny as she enters from the left. The two women at his side appear to be Ignorance and Suspicion. (Steven Pulimood)