WORKSHOP OF BENEDETTO DA MAIANO (1442-1497), LATE 15TH CENTURY

Such small scale images of the Madonna and Child undoubtedly served as private devotional images, judging from the variety of compositions by artists in Quattrocento and Cinquecento Florence that survive to date. This particular composition is after that by Benedetto da Maiano, as John Pope-Hennessy has suggested (J. Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1964, vol. I, pp. 161-162, and vol. III, plates 158 and 160), is most likely based on a lost marble composition that would undoubtedly be contemporaneous to the Virgin and Child on the unfinished 1491 Strozzi monument in Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Other examples of this popular relief include two in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (No. 5-1890 and 860-1891), and another in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin (No. 1581/Sch. 208). It is interesting to note that a not uncommon variant of this composition includes a seraphim in the lower register, as exemplified by the latter example mentioned in London (ibid, vol. III, plate 160), and another sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 16-17 November 1979, lot 153.