World culture: The canvas of Sandro Botticelli “Virgin with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist” is presented in Moscow

December 13-18, 2012 the Moscow Fine Arts salon presents a pre-show of paintings of Italian Renaissance, organized by Christie’s where, in particular, will be exhibited a painting by Sandro Botticelli “A Virgin with the Christ Child and St. John Baptist”, made in 1493-1495. 

The work of art comes from the collection of a billionaire and philanthropist John Rockefeller. He bought the painting in 1930s, and it has belonged to his family for over 50 years. The last 20 years the canvas was stored in the private collection of New York.

This painting in 2004 was exhibited in the Florentine Palazzo Strozzi at the exhibition “Botticelli and Filipino: passion and grace of the Florentine painting in the XV century”. Since then the painting has never been exhibited in public.

As part of the Moscow Fine Arts salon, there will be also presented works by Bartolomeo Veneto "Virgin and Child" (1502) and Scipione Pultsone "Portrait of Jacopo Bonkompani three quarters in the Shell" (1574), as well as landscape vedutist of the XVIII century by Giovanni Paolo Panini "Capitoline, Rome" (1750).