.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
This majestic, colorful panel represents the Virgin Mary seated at a lectern, embracing the Christ Child, who stands on her lap. A paragon of Renaissance beauty, the Virgin wears a red gown beneath a blue, gold-embroidered cloak with a green lining. Her long, golden tresses are covered with a diaphanous veil with delicate lace-work along its fringes. The Christ Child, dressed in a gauzy tunic edged with a gold pattern, gazes up at his mother as he pulls her cheek toward his. The Young Saint John the Baptist – the patron saint of Florence – stands in adoration at left. Dressed in his camel-hair raiment and a bright red cloak, he pledges devotion to his cousin. The three holy figures appear before a typical Florentine pietra serena arch and pilaster, overlooking a light-blue sky peppered with a few clouds. Depicting a subject that was popular in Botticelli’s native Florence, this panel was likely intended as an object of personal devotion, and perhaps was originally installed within a private family chapel.
As scholars have long recognized, the core of this composition relates to one of Botticelli’s earliest treatments of the Madonna: the circa 1468 Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist in the Louvre, Paris (fig. 1), a painting in which some also see workshop participation in certain parts, particularly the figure of the Baptist (see R. Lightbown, 1978, op. cit., p. 18, no. B1). Set before a rose garden, the figures in this early work remain strongly indebted to Filippo Lippi. This painting must have been very well-received as Botticelli adapted it on numerous occasions throughout his career.
Our painting belongs to a group of four compositional variants of the Louvre picture, of which the present work and the version in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (fig. 2) are generally agreed to be the strongest examples. As with the present painting, the question of workshop participation in the Dresden Madonna has been a matter of debate, though recent technical examination of the painting under the direction of Christoph Schölzel, together with its high quality, has led the museum to conclude it to be autograph and datable to around 1495-1500 (C. Schölzel, et al., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Bestandskatalog Italienische Gemälde des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts. Band I: Die Maltechnik, S. Koja, ed., Cottbus, 2023, pp. 219-22, no. 33). Other examples, all considered to be products of the workshop, include paintings in the Sala di Penelope, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and one formerly in the Widmann collection, Monaco and now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (see B. Eclercy in A. Schumacher, ed., Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt am Main, 2009, p. 326). There are also workshop variants without Saint John, one of the best of which is in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG782).
Having remained in the same private collection since it was acquired over half a century ago, the present painting has largely been inaccessible to scholars and has only recently been the subject of serious art historical and technical study. It was first published in 1854 when it was in the Beckford collection at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, by Gustav Waagen, who considered it to be fully autograph, describing it as `Very nobly conceived, and admirably executed in a tone of colouring unusually warm for him’ (loc. cit.). This attribution was followed by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (loc. cit.), though Hermann Ulmann (loc. cit.), George Noble Plunckett (loc. cit.) and Yukio Yashiro (loc. cit.) catalogued it as workshop. Roland Lightbown (loc. cit.) published it as a version of the Dresden painting, without commenting on the extent of Botticelli’s participation.
On the basis of firsthand examination aided by study of the painting’s underdrawing using infrared reflectography, Laurence Kanter, Keith Christiansen, and Christopher Daly, now consider the work to be by Botticelli with the assistance of his workshop (Kanter viewed the painting on 13 November 2025; Christiansen and Daly each viewed the painting on 19 November 2025). Nicoletta Pons, on the basis of photographs, concurs with this attribution (written communication, 12 December 2025). Kanter dates the Dresden panel to the early 1480s. Noting the more linear treatment of form and increased use of strong outlines, he suggests a somewhat later date for the present painting, of around 1488-90. Daly essentially agrees, dating the Dresden panel to the early to mid-1480s, and the present work to the early to mid-1490s. Christiansen would not eliminate a date for the present work as late as 1500.
As all of these scholars have observed, by the late 1480s Botticelli was running a highly successful workshop such that the majority of works he produced were, inevitably, executed with a degree of collaboration. Following Botticelli’s established practice, an assistant would have transferred the composition from a cartoon and blocked in the basic outline underdrawing with templates. Certain details, such as the figures’ heads, could be rotated at this stage as needed to create individualized compositions. Botticelli would then have embellished this with a brushed underdrawing. Indeed, infrared reflectography of the present painting (fig. 3) reveals a beautiful underdrawing, with confident brushwork featuring scrolling, fluid lines indicative of Botticelli’s own hand. Finer line drawing is also visible, revealing where the artist refined the forms with various pentimenti. Notable adjustments include changes to the positions of the Virgin’s hands, particularly all of the fingers on her left hand and several drapery folds, most evident along Christ’s back. Botticelli also appears to have experimented with depicting the Virgin’s prayerbook lying open on the table, though this compositional motif was ultimately abandoned. Curiously, both the Dresden panel and the present work have incised lines corresponding to the arch at upper left as well as a second arch just above the Virgin’s head. The purpose of this second arch remains unclear. Perhaps it corresponds to instructions relating to an architectural motif noted on the original cartoon that were followed by Botticelli’s assistants during the transfer process but then rejected on both occasions by Botticelli himself.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
In the 19th century, the painting was in the English collection of William Beckford at the ill-fated Fonthill Abbey, which was designed by James Wyatt and completed in 1807 (fig. 4). Beckford was the only son of Alderman William Beckford, MP (1709-70), and inherited a massive fortune derived from his family’s Jamaican plantations. He acquired a significant art collection during his travels throughout Europe, and was a great admirer of Botticelli, owning a significant number of his 92 surviving illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Over twenty works from his collection were acquired by London’s National Gallery, including Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan, and Velázquez’s Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver. To finance his extravagant and sometimes scandalous lifestyle, he was compelled to sell many works from his collection during his lifetime, including William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress (Soane Museum, London).
The painting is next recorded in the remarkable collection of E. Joly de Bammeville, which was sold at Christie’s in 1854. Like many of his contemporaries, Joly de Bammeville had a strong interest in early Italian pictures and bought with great discrimination in the field, owning, among other distinguished pieces: the superb Crucifixion (Manchester, City Art Gallery), then and until recently attributed to Duccio (265 guineas); and the now rather underrated Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by Lorenzo da Sanseverino, for which the National Gallery paid 375 guineas, and two Madonnas by Botticelli, including the present work, which was acquired by Alexander Barker for the then unprecedented sum of 520 guineas.
Considered to be one of the most enlightened collectors in England, Barker amassed a celebrated collection of decorative arts and paintings, including Botticelli’s Mars and Venus, Piero della Francesca’s Nativity and Luca Signorelli’s Triumph of Chastity: Love Disarmed and Bound (all today in the National Gallery, London), as well as Botticelli’s Casa Pucci scenes from the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, several panels of which are today in the Prado, Madrid.
The last of these paintings were eventually acquired, along with the present painting, by the Liverpool ship-owner Frederick Richards Leyland, the great patron of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. By the late 1860s, Leyland began seeking out works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Masters. In this he was advised by Rossetti and two dealers Murray Marks (1840-1918) and Charles Augustus Howell (1840-1890), under whose aegis he built up an outstanding collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque pictures. Guided by Marks and the architects Norman Shaw and Thomas Jeckyll, he created two of the grandest aesthetic interiors of the 1870s and 1880: 22 Queen’s Gate and 49 Prince’s Gate. The house at Prince’s Gate is best known for James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room (Harmony in Blue and Gold; Freer Art Gallery, Washington D.C.).
The next owner, Vernon J. Watney, was the heir of the celebrated family of brewers, and in 1891 married Lady Margaret Wallop, fifth daughter of Isaac, 5th Earl of Portsmouth. He acquired Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire and built up an outstanding collection of pictures which was kept there and at his London residence, 11 Berkeley Square. Many paintings in the collection were assembled in the 1890s, partly at sales at Christie's and partly from dealers and agents, such as Sir George Donaldson, and included such masterpieces as Botticelli's Marriage Feast of Nastagio degli Onesti (as with the present painting, acquired from the Leyland collection) and two panels by Juan de Flandes, the Temptation now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Marriage at Cana, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Linsky collection.
We are grateful to Laurence Kanter, Christopher Daly, and Keith Christiansen who have confirmed the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection, and to Nicoletta Pons, who confirmed the attribution on the basis of digital images.
As scholars have long recognized, the core of this composition relates to one of Botticelli’s earliest treatments of the Madonna: the circa 1468 Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist in the Louvre, Paris (fig. 1), a painting in which some also see workshop participation in certain parts, particularly the figure of the Baptist (see R. Lightbown, 1978, op. cit., p. 18, no. B1). Set before a rose garden, the figures in this early work remain strongly indebted to Filippo Lippi. This painting must have been very well-received as Botticelli adapted it on numerous occasions throughout his career.
Our painting belongs to a group of four compositional variants of the Louvre picture, of which the present work and the version in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (fig. 2) are generally agreed to be the strongest examples. As with the present painting, the question of workshop participation in the Dresden Madonna has been a matter of debate, though recent technical examination of the painting under the direction of Christoph Schölzel, together with its high quality, has led the museum to conclude it to be autograph and datable to around 1495-1500 (C. Schölzel, et al., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Bestandskatalog Italienische Gemälde des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts. Band I: Die Maltechnik, S. Koja, ed., Cottbus, 2023, pp. 219-22, no. 33). Other examples, all considered to be products of the workshop, include paintings in the Sala di Penelope, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and one formerly in the Widmann collection, Monaco and now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (see B. Eclercy in A. Schumacher, ed., Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt am Main, 2009, p. 326). There are also workshop variants without Saint John, one of the best of which is in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG782).
Having remained in the same private collection since it was acquired over half a century ago, the present painting has largely been inaccessible to scholars and has only recently been the subject of serious art historical and technical study. It was first published in 1854 when it was in the Beckford collection at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, by Gustav Waagen, who considered it to be fully autograph, describing it as `Very nobly conceived, and admirably executed in a tone of colouring unusually warm for him’ (loc. cit.). This attribution was followed by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (loc. cit.), though Hermann Ulmann (loc. cit.), George Noble Plunckett (loc. cit.) and Yukio Yashiro (loc. cit.) catalogued it as workshop. Roland Lightbown (loc. cit.) published it as a version of the Dresden painting, without commenting on the extent of Botticelli’s participation.
On the basis of firsthand examination aided by study of the painting’s underdrawing using infrared reflectography, Laurence Kanter, Keith Christiansen, and Christopher Daly, now consider the work to be by Botticelli with the assistance of his workshop (Kanter viewed the painting on 13 November 2025; Christiansen and Daly each viewed the painting on 19 November 2025). Nicoletta Pons, on the basis of photographs, concurs with this attribution (written communication, 12 December 2025). Kanter dates the Dresden panel to the early 1480s. Noting the more linear treatment of form and increased use of strong outlines, he suggests a somewhat later date for the present painting, of around 1488-90. Daly essentially agrees, dating the Dresden panel to the early to mid-1480s, and the present work to the early to mid-1490s. Christiansen would not eliminate a date for the present work as late as 1500.
As all of these scholars have observed, by the late 1480s Botticelli was running a highly successful workshop such that the majority of works he produced were, inevitably, executed with a degree of collaboration. Following Botticelli’s established practice, an assistant would have transferred the composition from a cartoon and blocked in the basic outline underdrawing with templates. Certain details, such as the figures’ heads, could be rotated at this stage as needed to create individualized compositions. Botticelli would then have embellished this with a brushed underdrawing. Indeed, infrared reflectography of the present painting (fig. 3) reveals a beautiful underdrawing, with confident brushwork featuring scrolling, fluid lines indicative of Botticelli’s own hand. Finer line drawing is also visible, revealing where the artist refined the forms with various pentimenti. Notable adjustments include changes to the positions of the Virgin’s hands, particularly all of the fingers on her left hand and several drapery folds, most evident along Christ’s back. Botticelli also appears to have experimented with depicting the Virgin’s prayerbook lying open on the table, though this compositional motif was ultimately abandoned. Curiously, both the Dresden panel and the present work have incised lines corresponding to the arch at upper left as well as a second arch just above the Virgin’s head. The purpose of this second arch remains unclear. Perhaps it corresponds to instructions relating to an architectural motif noted on the original cartoon that were followed by Botticelli’s assistants during the transfer process but then rejected on both occasions by Botticelli himself.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
In the 19th century, the painting was in the English collection of William Beckford at the ill-fated Fonthill Abbey, which was designed by James Wyatt and completed in 1807 (fig. 4). Beckford was the only son of Alderman William Beckford, MP (1709-70), and inherited a massive fortune derived from his family’s Jamaican plantations. He acquired a significant art collection during his travels throughout Europe, and was a great admirer of Botticelli, owning a significant number of his 92 surviving illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Over twenty works from his collection were acquired by London’s National Gallery, including Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan, and Velázquez’s Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver. To finance his extravagant and sometimes scandalous lifestyle, he was compelled to sell many works from his collection during his lifetime, including William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress (Soane Museum, London).
The painting is next recorded in the remarkable collection of E. Joly de Bammeville, which was sold at Christie’s in 1854. Like many of his contemporaries, Joly de Bammeville had a strong interest in early Italian pictures and bought with great discrimination in the field, owning, among other distinguished pieces: the superb Crucifixion (Manchester, City Art Gallery), then and until recently attributed to Duccio (265 guineas); and the now rather underrated Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by Lorenzo da Sanseverino, for which the National Gallery paid 375 guineas, and two Madonnas by Botticelli, including the present work, which was acquired by Alexander Barker for the then unprecedented sum of 520 guineas.
Considered to be one of the most enlightened collectors in England, Barker amassed a celebrated collection of decorative arts and paintings, including Botticelli’s Mars and Venus, Piero della Francesca’s Nativity and Luca Signorelli’s Triumph of Chastity: Love Disarmed and Bound (all today in the National Gallery, London), as well as Botticelli’s Casa Pucci scenes from the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, several panels of which are today in the Prado, Madrid.
The last of these paintings were eventually acquired, along with the present painting, by the Liverpool ship-owner Frederick Richards Leyland, the great patron of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. By the late 1860s, Leyland began seeking out works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Masters. In this he was advised by Rossetti and two dealers Murray Marks (1840-1918) and Charles Augustus Howell (1840-1890), under whose aegis he built up an outstanding collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque pictures. Guided by Marks and the architects Norman Shaw and Thomas Jeckyll, he created two of the grandest aesthetic interiors of the 1870s and 1880: 22 Queen’s Gate and 49 Prince’s Gate. The house at Prince’s Gate is best known for James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room (Harmony in Blue and Gold; Freer Art Gallery, Washington D.C.).
The next owner, Vernon J. Watney, was the heir of the celebrated family of brewers, and in 1891 married Lady Margaret Wallop, fifth daughter of Isaac, 5th Earl of Portsmouth. He acquired Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire and built up an outstanding collection of pictures which was kept there and at his London residence, 11 Berkeley Square. Many paintings in the collection were assembled in the 1890s, partly at sales at Christie's and partly from dealers and agents, such as Sir George Donaldson, and included such masterpieces as Botticelli's Marriage Feast of Nastagio degli Onesti (as with the present painting, acquired from the Leyland collection) and two panels by Juan de Flandes, the Temptation now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Marriage at Cana, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Linsky collection.
We are grateful to Laurence Kanter, Christopher Daly, and Keith Christiansen who have confirmed the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection, and to Nicoletta Pons, who confirmed the attribution on the basis of digital images.