The Met to Acquire Renaissance Artist Rosso Fiorentino’s Rediscovered Seminal Painting

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced it will acquire a rediscovered painting by Renaissance artist Rosso Fiorentino, which had been thought lost for centuries. Fiorentino, one of the great masters of Mannerism, is known for his arresting portraits and expressive religious works. Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist is the seminal painting described in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and launched Fiorentino’s career.

“This painting is a rare and pivotal early work by one of the most important painters of the 16th century, striking in its experimental ambition and psychological intensity,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “With his unusual placement of the figures and daring postures, Rosso transforms a familiar devotional type into a charged encounter that draws the beholder into a complex interplay of seeing, feeling, and believing. The rediscovery of this work reshapes our understanding of Rosso’s early oeuvre and the emergence of more expressive and dynamic compositions in 16th-century Florentine painting.”

The painting, currently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, was discovered during conservation treatment that removed a layer of overpaint and revealed Saint John the Evangelist. “This work will anchor The Met’s collection of 16th-century religious paintings, an exceptional and complementary group that elucidates key developments in painting for private devotion during the first quarter of the 16th century in Italy,” said Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of the Department of European Paintings.