Follower of Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child

The absence of any furnishings as well as the dark background focus the attention on the Virgin Mary, who makes direct eye contact with the viewer. She stands underneath an open curtain, holding her infant son as if to prevent him from falling from the narrow ledge in the foreground. A transparent veil does little to conceal Christ’s body; the Virgin wears her usual blue cloak over a red undergarment. The golden star on her right shoulder refers to her role as guiding star and her title of Stella Maris (‘Star of the Sea’).

The pose of the Virgin and Christ Child is very close to the central part of the altarpiece that Sandro Botticelli made for the high altar of the Florentine church of S. Barnaba during the late 1480s. This is no coincidence: the altarpiece must have enjoyed great popularity, prompting the production of copies, many of which survive. The assistants in Botticelli’s workshop would have been tasked with meeting the high demand for such copies. The quality varies according to the skills of individual assistants, and this work is on the lower end of that spectrum.

The church of S. Barnaba, including its high altar, was under the patronage of the powerful Guild of Physicians and Pharmacists (Arte dei Medici e Speziali). Perhaps a member of this guild desired a partial copy of the altarpiece to be made, to which they would have regularly directed their prayers. The small dimensions of this copy might even have allowed its original owner to take it with them while they travelled.

The current frame of the painting was made in the nineteenth century to look like an original fifteenth-century example. It is likely that one of the previous owners commissioned this frame especially for the painting. It’s possible that this was the politician, diplomat and archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894), who was given this picture sometime before 1869. Best known for rediscovering the ancient Assyrian cities of Nimrud and Nineveh, Layard also formed an important collection of Italian Renaissance pictures that he later bequeathed to the National Gallery.