Virgin and Child with Angels (c. 1460): Art, History and Details

Virgin and Child with Angels (c. 1460) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Fra Filippo Lippi (Italian, c. 1406–1469).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This painting, produced by one of Fra Filippo Lippi’s many imitators in the city of Florence, is very close to the composition of the now lost central panel of the triptych commissioned by the Medici family in 1457. It was purchased by Mrs. L. E. Holden before the museum’s acquisition of the two flanking panels of Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint Michael. It has been suggested that this painting is a copy of the original lost central panel of Fra Filippo’s triptych of 1457.

Object facts

• Title: Virgin and Child with Angels
• Date: c. 1460
• Creator attribution: Fra Filippo Lippi (Italian, c. 1406–1469)
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Painting
• Technique: tempera and gold on wood panel
• Dimensions: Framed: 186.7 x 97.8 x 14 cm (73 1/2 x 38 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.); Unframed: 95 x 53 cm (37 3/8 x 20 7/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.802

Collection credit

Holden Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollenden Gallery, James Jackson Jarves, and Liberty Emery Holden. Handbook for Visitors to the Hollenden Gallery of Masters: Exhibited at the Boston Foreign Art Exhibition in 1883-4. [Place of publication not identified]: [J.J. Jarves], 1883.
• Berenson, Mary L. "Dipinti Italiana in Cleveland, S.U.A." Rassegna d'Arte Vol. VII (Jan. 1907).
• Berenson, Bernard. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. New York: Putnam's Sons, 1909.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.