Virgin and Child with Two Angels
Francesco Botticini·c. 1470
Historical Context
Francesco Botticini's Virgin and Child with Two Angels (c. 1470) reflects the flourishing domestic devotion market in late Quattrocento Florence. Botticini trained in Verrocchio's workshop alongside Botticelli and absorbed their shared visual vocabulary of elegant Madonnas with softly modeled faces. His work was often attributed to Botticelli by later collectors because of strong formal similarities, though Botticini's style is slightly drier and more linear. This panel, with its two flanking angels creating a gentle symmetry, was intended for a domestic altar or bedroom — the small scale and portable format suggesting private daily veneration by a prosperous Florentine household.
Technical Analysis
Executed in tempera on panel, Botticini employs the crisp linear style characteristic of Verrocchio's circle. The figures are modeled with delicate hatching, and the Virgin's features show the idealized beauty typical of Florentine painting in the 1470s.
Provenance
Alexander Barker (died 1847), London; sold Christie’s, London, June 6, 8–11, 1874, no. 66, as Antonio Pollaiuolo, “The Madonna, seated with the infant Saviour upon her lap in the act of blessing, two saints in the background,” to G. P. Boyce for £84 [price and buyer given by Redford 1888; the printed description from the sale catalogue is pasted on the back of the painting]; G. P. Boyce, London, 1874 to 1897; sold, Christie’s, London, July 1, 1897, no. 344, as Antonio Pollaiuolo, to Agnew for £446 5s [price and buyer given in Graves 1921]. Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris [according to catalogue of the Weber sale, 1912]; sold to Consul Eduard F. Weber, Hamburg, 1897; sold Lepke, Berlin, February 20–22, 1912, no. 23, pl. 8, as Florentine School, c. 1475, for 40,000 marks [price in annotated catalogue at Getty Center, Los Angeles]. Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, by 1916 [according to Kleinberger records, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]; sold to Kleinberger, New York, 1916; sold to Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), Chicago, 1917 [bill of sale, Art Institute archives]; by descent to his wife Carrie Hutchinson Ryerson (1859–1937), Chicago, 1932 [Last Will and Testament of Martin A. Ryerson, Died August 11, 1932, copy in Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago]; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1937.
