Madonna with Child and Two Angels

Italian painter Filippo Lippi painted this Madonna with Child and Two Angels around 1465. The Virgin sits in profile against a window, the Christ child supported by two playful angels. One angel turns to smile at the viewer while holding the chubby infant. Through the window, a detailed landscape extends to distant mountains.

Lippi broke with conventional Madonna imagery. His Virgin is young, pretty, and somewhat melancholy, possibly modeled on his mistress Lucrezia Buti (a nun he famously abducted). The angels are mischievous rather than solemn. The window framing creates one of the first examples of a "portrait" Madonna.

This intimate painting deeply influenced Botticelli, who trained with Lippi. The Uffizi displays it as a landmark work of mid-15th-century Florentine painting.