#tondo

This one's round — a tondo — and from what I can find, historians don't fully agree who painted most of it: it's catalogued under one name, but they think a second painter, plus workshop hands, did a lot of the actual work. It's been called the 'Cook Tondo' for decades, after a private collector, even though it left his collection a long time ago.

This one has had an odd trip: it belonged to the Russian imperial collection at one point, and the Soviet government sold it off in the 1930s to raise cash — that's apparently how it ended up in Washington.

The candles in this one apparently weren't just decorative — real ones were meant to burn in front of it, so the painted flames would blur together with the real light in a dim room.