2016 USPS Florentine Madonna And Child Holiday Forever Stamps 100Pcs/Pack

This 2016 Christmas stamp features a detail of Madonna and Child, a 15th-century tempera-on-panel painting in the Widener Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The painting is dated to circa 1470, and its anonymous artist is known only as “a Follower of Fra Filippo Lippi and Pesellino.”

Art historians have long sought to identify the artist who created this painting. Scholars have recently concluded that the painter was heavily influenced by two prominent 15th-century Florentine artists, Fra Filippo Lippi and Francesco Pesellino. The specific painting on this stamp is believed to be based on a Pesellino painting, now in the Muse des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in France, which shows a very similar Madonna and Child against a different background.