The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, oil on panel, 72.5 x 58.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Louis Waldmann for confirming the attribution.

The present painting is the work of a Florentine artist active around 1495–1515 whose oeuvre Everett Fahy subsumed under the name “Master of the Scandicci Lamentation”. Having probably trained in the workshop of Perugino, as Fahy has suggested, and of about the same age as Perugino’s pupil Raphael, the Florentine artist soon also came under the influence of the late school of Ghirlandaio, so that in the past many of his paintings were assigned to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio or Francesco Granacci. The artist’s compositions also attest to his familiarity with the works of Leonardo’s second Florentine period.

The present painting is an interesting variant of a subject that may be regarded as one of the principal themes of Renaissance painting in Florence. The manner in which the Madonna directly faces the spectator, thereby introducing him or her into the scene, is reminiscent of a portrait. The focus of the scene is on Christ blessing the Infant Saint John the Baptist; a form of dialogue is thereby created between the two figures, while the Virgin Mary, pointing at the body of her young son with two fingers, alludes to his sacrificial death in what appears to be a Eucharistic motif. The harmonious colouring of the landscape, which is bathed in a subdued light, and the tones in the foreground are characteristic of this master. A panel by the Master of the Scandicci Lamentation closely related to the present painting is now in the Galleria Palatina at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (see fig. 1.)