Overview
- The oil-on-canvas Madonna and Child with Saint John the Evangelist has been re-dated to 1512–13 after technical treatment.
- Conservation removed later overpaint to reveal Saint John in the foreground, resolving earlier doubts about authorship and title.
- Met curators describe the work as the artist’s earliest recorded painting to survive and note that only about two dozen Rosso paintings are firmly attributed.
- The painting had long been cataloged as a ca. 1520 Madonna and Child and was at times assigned to other artists by scholars.
- Now on view in The Met’s European Paintings galleries in gallery 609, the acquisition is presented as reshaping understanding of Rosso’s early mannerist development.