Virgin with the Child and Scenes from the Life of St Anne

Filippo Lippi painted this complex devotional panel around 1452, combining the central image of the Virgin and Child with narrative scenes from the life of Saint Anne arranged around the margins. This format, known as a "dossal" or narrative altarpiece, was a continuation of medieval pictorial traditions that Lippi adapted with Renaissance spatial techniques. The painting dates from Lippi's mature period in Florence, when he was among the city's most celebrated painters and a favorite of Cosimo de' Medici, who repeatedly intervened to protect Lippi from the consequences of his famously irregular personal life.

Lippi demonstrates his characteristic combination of tender sentiment and spatial innovation, organizing the subsidiary scenes with a clarity that reveals his study of Albertian perspective theory. The main figures of the Virgin and Child display the soft, rounded modeling and idealized sweetness that became Lippi's trademark and profoundly influenced his pupil Botticelli.