The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist
Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510) · c. 1465-1475
The Virgin holds the Child on her knee and the young Saint John the Baptist approaches from the side to adore him. A pillar rises behind the group, and the figures are set close to the picture plane so that you see them at life size. The Virgin's oval face, the fine hands, the transparent veil over her hair and the melancholy tilt of her head are all Botticelli's, and the Child looks out with a gravity beyond his years.
The panel was painted in Florence early in Botticelli's career, in the years when he was still close to his master Filippo Lippi, and the museum dates it between fourteen fifty and fourteen seventy five. The Louvre's specialists suggest that the young Saint John and the pillar were entrusted to a member of the workshop, a common practice for a busy Florentine studio, and if you compare the boy's face with the Virgin's you will see a slight difference of quality. The picture may have belonged to a Spanish collector, Durand, and was bought in eighteen twenty four from the dealer Mauco, one of the founders of the so called European Museum in Paris.
Did You Know? The little Saint John may be the work of an assistant; the Virgin and Child are Botticelli's own, and the difference is visible if you compare the faces.
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