Wer ist der Mönch mit dem Bart? Ein Beitrag zur Ikonographie und zur ursprünglichen Bestimmung von Filippo Lippis Berliner "Anbetung im Walde"

Not least due to the impressive atmosphere of the dense depiction of landscape, one painting in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie is able to charm visitors: Filippo Lippi's Madonna in the Forest. The painting is identified with that mentioned in an inventory of the Palazzo Medici written in 1492 as a depiction of St. Mary adoring the child recumbent at her feet, with St. John, God the Father, the dove of the Holy Spirit, and St. Bernard; the painting was used as the altarpiece of the chapel at that time. This article asks whether the identification of the monk is correct, and whether the history of the painting's interpretation is not owed to an erroneous confidence in a false entry in that inventory.