The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This charming picture is painted on an un-reinforced piece of wood. The frame has been added to this original panel yet does seem to be original. The paint layer has been fairly recently varnished but the restoration attempts to make the work more presentable without cleaning the surface. What appears to be an old if not original patina is still quite evident and although there are losses to the left of the chin, in the shoulder of the Madonna and in isolated yet fairly evenly spaced areas throughout the painting, the condition seems to be fairly fresh. There is no abrasion or loss of detail and arguably the approach to this painting would be to clean the surface and perhaps reexamine the retouches because even though the painting seems a little scruffy at present, the condition is actually very good.
"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."

Everett Fahy was the first to group together a corpus of paintings for this artist whom he named after the Adoration of the Magi with Saints Francis, Paul and John the Baptist in the church of San Francesco in Fiesole.¹ The artist's personality has not been definitively established but he has been tentatively identified with Jacopo del Sellaio's collaborator Filippo di Giuliano.

What is certain is that the artist was working in and around Florence circa 1500, painting in the idiom of Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose influence is evident here in the way the figures are clearly placed and ordered in the space around them, and in the steeply receding throne, a favourite motif of Ghirlandaio's which accentuates the pictorial depth. The carefully constructed, individualised physiognomies and controlled gestures also find their roots in Ghirlandaio's work.

1. See E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo, PhD thesis, 1976, pp. 169-170.