The Met to acquire Renaissance artist Rosso Fiorentino's rediscovered seminal painting

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it will acquire a newly rediscovered painting by Renaissance artist Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540), one of the great masters of the maniera moderna, known today as Mannerism. Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist, thought to be lost for centuries, was newly identified during a recent conservation treatment that removed a layer of overpaint on the canvas, revealing the remarkable figure of Saint John the Evangelist in the foreground of the picture plane. The reemergence of the figure—after perhaps centuries of being overpainted—made clear that this is the seminal painting described in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists as the work that launched the young Florentine artist'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