The Madonna and Child

As D.C. Shorr points out in The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy, 1954, pp.148-151, this type of Infant, reaching down into the Virgin's robe, can be regarded as a playful expression of the intimate relationship between the Madonna and Child. In Italian art the earliest example of this action of the Child seems to be the panel by the Master of the Dominican Effigies, formerly recorded in the Finoelst Collection, Paris. Compare also with the panel by Allegreto Nuzi in the Institute of Arts, Detroit, where Christ plunges his whole arm into the robe of the Madonna as he does in the present lot.

See colour illustration