This refined and lyrical painting, executed by an artist working in the circle of the Umbrian artist Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino, contains all the hallmarks of the celebrated artist’s style. Characterized by a painterly dolcezza, or gentle sweetness, the balanced composition, whose figures are imbued with a statuesque classicism, abounds with decorative detail.

Particularly celebrated for his depictions of the Madonna and Child, Perugino explored this particular three-quarter-length arrangement throughout his career. The seated Madonna, tenderly holding the pudgy Christ Child appears in several works by Perugino and his associates, including his Madonna and Child (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1939.1.215), as well as Madonna and Child with two female saints (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 132) and Andrea di Aloigi’s Madonna and Child (London, National Gallery, inv. no. NG1220). The central figural motif, with the animated Christ Child appearing to kick his serene mother’s forearm, is also found in two of Giannicolo di Paolo’s large-scale altarpieces: Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Roch (Todi, Duomo) and Madonna and Child with Saints Peter Martyr, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and the Blessed Giacomo Villa (Pieve, Duomo).

Certain salient features included in the present painting—the sculpted bas-relief parapet (which humorously blends Christological imagery and antique motifs), solitary apple, tasseled cushion, and prominent stella maris on the Madonna’s gown—also appear in the Master of the Schleissheimer’s Madonna and Child (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1480), suggesting the two works may have shared an as-yet unidentified common source.

Though best known today as Raphael’s teacher, Perugino enjoyed a long and successful career that traversed the Italian peninsula. His popularity extended well into the nineteenth century, which probably explains why this work bore an attribution to the Umbrian master as it passed through several prominent nineteenth-century collects ions, among them, those of Prince Anatole N. Demidoff and Lucile Minoret de Nolleval.