The Nativity

Fra Diamante was a Carmelite friar who worked for years as the assistant of Filippo Lippi, and his hand is so close to his master's that the picture was long given to Lippi himself; for a time scholars called its author the Master of the Louvre Nativity before settling on Fra Diamante. The panel was the centre of an altarpiece painted for the church of Santa Margherita at Prato, whose three predella scenes, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple and the Massacre of the Innocents, are still in the museum at Prato. It stood in the church until eighteen twelve, when it was sent to the Louvre under Napoleon's seizures, catalogued as a Filippo Lippi.

Did You Know? The painting was so close to Filippo Lippi's manner that it travelled to Paris under his name in eighteen twelve, and the real author, his assistant Fra Diamante, was only recognised later.