The Madonna and Child

This picture apparently depends on a panel of slightly smaller size (52 x 36 cm.), in which the position of the Child's left arm is different and he holds an apple in this, formerly in the Borletti collection, Milan by the Piedmontese master, Macrino d'Alba (E. Villata, Macrino d'Alba, Alba, 2000, pp. 193-4, no. 21), which is in turn related to a Madonna and Child with two Putti formerly in the Feigla collection, Prague, in which the left arm corresponds with that in the present work (op. cit., pp. 191-2, no. 20). The composition implies a knowledge of the Litta Madonna at St. Petersburg, generally attributed to Leonardo and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, but Villata (op. cit., pp. 99 and 193) also invokes a panel by Antoniazzo Romano in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. The head of the Madonna is closely paralleled in a full-length Madonna and Child of 1513 in a Torinese private collection (op. cit., pp. 199-200, no. 23). As Everett Fahy pointed out, another version of the present composition, differing most obviously in the detail of the drapery and the positioning of the Child's left leg, has been attributed by Elena Ciarli to the workshop of Aimo and Balzarino Volpi, who were active at Casale Monferrato, some fifty kilometres from Alba.