Giovanni Bastianini was born in 1830 and from an early age began creating forgeries of Renaissance sculpture. The present lot is based upon a fragment of a relief of the Madonna and Child from the school of Desiderio, presently in the Musée de Lyon, which was evidently thought by Bastianini to have been obscure enough a source to use to avoid detection. Bastianini's career, and the present relief are both discused by John Pope-Hennessy in his essay 'The Forging of Italian Renaissance Sculpture' (loc.cit.).