The design of this characteristic Renaissance Virgin and Child derives from Fra Filippo Lippi's painting from the 1460s in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (fig. 1).¹ Although in the past ascribed to various painters from the great Botticelli to the Master of San Miniato, in 1989 the picture was convincingly attributed to the so-called Master of the Argonauts, now identified as the young Jacopo del Sellaio. Everett Fahy (see Literature) pointed out several paintings attributable to the Argonaut Master, including a pair of cassone panels in the Bode Museum, Berlin; a Judgement of Paris in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; two Madonnas in the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston; a Virgin and Child with an angel in the Acton collects ion, Florence; and a fragmentary Virgin and Child, formerly in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Fahy's assessment of the artist's idiosyncratic style, which includes ‘pinched physiognomies, sharply tapered fingers, and heavily lidded eyes’, is evident in the present work.² He further pointed out that Zeri (see Literature) had grouped the ex-Bornheim (not Bernheimer, as is oft-mistaken in the painting's bibliography) Madonna with several other pictures, including the Acton painting mentioned above; a Virgin and Child enthroned formerly in the Ricasoli collects ion, Florence; and a Virgin adoring the Christ Child in the Musée de Tessé, Le Mans. Zeri assigned all these works to the early period of the Master of San Miniato, and while Fahy agreed that the paintings are indeed by the same hand, he ascribed them instead to the Master of the Argonauts, while tentatively attributing the Le Mans picture to the young Jacopo del Sellaio. When the ex-Metropolitan painting was recently on the market, Fahy came to the conclusion only alluded to in his 1989 article that the works assigned to the Master of the Argonauts are, in fact, early paintings by Jacopo del Sellaio. This identification has more recently been endorsed by both Professor Andrea De Marchi and Dott. Davide Civettini.

In the present work, the Child is supported entirely by His mother's arms, unlike Lippi's Munich prototype, where He is seated in her lap. While the tender embrace between the two is comparable in both paintings, Lippi's Child gazes directly at her, unlike in the present work, where He engages the viewer. In both paintings the elaborate armrest of the chair on which the Madonna is seated provides a useful accompaniment to other decorative elements such as the folds of her veil, as well as the rings and gold embroidery. Lippi's background is more dramatic, but the placement of the ragged mountains to the left in the present work creates a more natural and pleasing diagonal from upper-left to lower right and accentuates the focus on the embrace.

The inscription on the reverse of a photograph held in the Fototeca Zeri shows that the German scholar Hermann Voss ascribed the painting to Botticelli, as does the inscription on the reverse of the panel. The influential connoisseur Bernard Berenson was not shy in his praise of the picture claiming he knew ‘more than one late Fra Filippo, more than one early Botticelli, which is not so impressive as this version of a pattern which the first invented and the second exploited so marvellously’.

¹ Inv. no. 647; J. Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippo, Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, London 1993, p. 469, no. 62, reproduced in colour p. 250, pl. 140.

² Fahy 1989, p. 294.