The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot by Piero di Cosimo

This is Piero di Cosimo's 'The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot', painted around 1490 for a chapel in Florence's Basilica di Santo Spirito and now held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The Capponi family commissioned it, and it stayed with them for centuries before traveling through Wales and New York to its current home.

Look first at the joined hands of Mary and Elizabeth at center. That touch is the theological heart of the Visitation: the moment Elizabeth feels the unborn Christ. Then look to the right, at Saint Anthony Abbot. He wears a pair of eyeglasses, a detail so striking that Giorgio Vasari mentioned it specifically in his 'Lives of the Artists', calling the spectacles 'very good.' In the background, tiny figures form a Florentine civic procession, a snapshot of the city the Capponi family moved through every day.

The Capponi were a powerful Florentine family, and Santo Spirito was their neighborhood church. To have Piero di Cosimo, known for his inventive, sometimes eccentric style, paint your altarpiece was a statement. The painting remained with the family until 1850, passed through several collections, and was eventually donated to the NGA by Samuel H. Kress in 1939.

The sacred and the civic share the same space here. What other details make this feel so distinctly Florentine to you?

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