Schmid-Paganini, Zapf et. al sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 26 October 1946, lot 1154 (as by Bottticini);
There acquired by the family of the present owner;
Thence by descent.

The following condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. Structural Condition The artist's panel has a join which runs vertically through the centre and has two butterfly inserts on the reverse. There is a gessoed layer on the reverse of the panel, some of which has degraded and some evidence of old and now inactive woodworm. The panel is slightly bowed but secure and stable and no structural work is required. Paint Surface The paint surface has a very discoloured and degraded varnish layer and would undoubtedly be transformed by cleaning. There are a few small flecks of paint loss around the framing edges and in particular in the lower left. There are also a few small worm holes and surface deposits. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows a few small retouchings on the Virgin's robes and touches on the red pigments on the cushion beneath the Christ child. There may well be other retouchings beneath the old discoloured varnish layers that do not fluoresce clearly under ultraviolet light due to the degraded nature of the varnish layers. There is a fine line of craquelure running through the Virgin's hair which is stable and secure. Summary The painting therefore appears to be in good and stable condition and should respond well to cleaning, restoration and revarnishing.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Verrocchio is best known today for being the pre-eminent sculptor in Florence during the third quarter of the 15th century. His activity as a painter is harder to define largely because there are no known documented autograph works but in 1472 Verrocchio was registered as a painter ('dipintore') with the artists' guild, indicating that his activity in this medium was well established by that date. A reconstruction of his oeuvre is particularly difficult in view of the fact that the three paintings specifically mentioned by the biographer Giorgio Vasari are all problematic from an attributional point of view.¹  What seems more certain is that there was a group of accomplished painters active in Verrocchio's bottega, producing painted variants of their master's designs. In partic🍬ular, numerous devotional images of the Madonna and Child in half- or three-quarter-length exist, of which this is a fine example. Though these paintings form a cohesive group of Verrocchio-esque works, there has been little consensu♍s among scholars about individual paintings' authorship and dating.

This particular panel, though as yet unattributed, clearly comes out of Verrocchio's workshop. The overall design is indebted to Verrocchio and the position of the Christ Child, standing on a cushion in gentle contrapposto, is directly derived from a Verrocchio invention. The marble relief on which it depends is in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (Fig. 1), and in all likelihood is a workshop production based on Verrocchio's own terracotta relief in the same museum. The position of the Madonna's right hand and the Christ Child's pose both served as the basis for countless painted variants of the theme, both in three-dimensional and painted form.²  A painting in Berlin, Staatliche Museen, shows the Christ Child standing on a parapet and both figures set before a wall with a distant landscape beyond.³  The motif of a parapet to define space within the composition is something the artist has also adopted here; Christ stands on a cushion that rests on a socle in the foreground, while the figure group as a whole is set before a parapet decorated with a trompe l'oeil recessed faux marble panel. This use of a 'double parapet' also appears in a panel given to Verrocchio's workshop in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.⁴  There too the Christ Child folds His left arm across his body, as in the Berlin panel, showing that there is a close inter-relation among all these Verrocchio-esque compositions. Another work that is closely comparable to the present painting is the panel in the Städel, Frankfurt, which has been tentatively attributed to Filippo Lippi's assistant Piermatteo d'Amelia (c.1450-1500).⁵  As with similar Verrocchio-esque designs the figures are placed frontally, thus maintaining the design's monumentality without having to sacrifice any of its sentiment. The two works particularly resemble each other in the positioning of the Madonna's right hand and in the pose of the Christ Child. Numerous drawings attest to the existence in Verrocchio's workshop of a statuette showing the Christ Child standing with His right hand raised in blessing.⁶  Verrocchio almost certainly had recourse to Desiderio da Settignano for this figure, as exemplified by the Christ Child surmounting the latter's marble tabernacle in the church of San Lorenzo, Florence.⁷

The attribution of the present panel has eluded scholars. It has not appeared on the art market for over sixty years and last time it was offered at auction it had a rather implausible attribution to Francesco Botticini (1446-1498). Although comparable in style to works by Biagio d'Antonio and Piermatteo d'Amelia, this painting appears to be by a different hand to the aforementioned devotional panels, nor does it appear to be by the same hand as the 'Ruskin Madonna' in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, which has been tentatively ascribed to the young Domenico Ghirlandaio. In all probability it is by an accomplished painter working in Verrocchio's bottega in circa 1475-80 or shortly ꦦafterwards, whose enduring image of the Madonna and Child is characteristic of the art so cherished by patrons and collectors in Renaissance Florence.

1.  The Pistoia altarpiece was executed almost entirely by Verrocchio's pupil Lorenzo di Credi; the San Salvi Baptism of Christ was extensively reworked by another pupil, Leonardo da Vinci; and the Madonna and Child with Saints in Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Muzeum, is actually by Biagio d'Antonio.
2.  The marble and terracotta reliefs are reproduced in A. Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, New Haven & London 1997, figs. 110 and 109 respectively. Another terracotta relief, attributed to Francesco di Simone and in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, demonstrates a variant of the design in which the Madonna and Child are in similar poses, though she is seated and He stands on her lap instead of a cushion: see A. Wright, in Renaissance Florence. The Art of the 1470s, exhibition catalogue, London, National Gallery, 20 October 1999 – 16 January 2000, pp. 182-83, cat. no. 28, reproduced in colour.
3.  Tempera on panel, 74 by 46 cm.; reproduced in A. Butterfield, op. cit., p. 193, fig. 262.
4.  Tempera and gold on panel, 66 by 48.3 cm.; reproduced in Butterfield, ibid., p. 196, fig. 268.
5.  Tempera on panel, transferred to board, 84.7 by 64.5 cm.; see P. Lee Rubin, in Renaissance Florence... (op. cit.), pp. 180-81, cat. no. 27, reproduced in colour.
6.  See, for example, the sheet attributed to Franceso di Simone Ferrucci in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; reproduced in Renaissance Florence... (ibid.), pp. 220-21, cat. no. 42.
7.  Datable to circa 1460-61; reproduced in Butterfield, ibid., p. 37, fig. 39.