Acquired by Lady Wantage in 1904, this Florentine Renaissance painting of singular beauty has remained in the same family collection until the present day. Little studied and largely known only from black and white photographs, the painting was lost from view, its location often listed incorrectly, and largely overlooked in more recent monographs and exhibitions. In much of the critical discourse on Botticelli—with one notable exception discussed below—the work was generally ascribed to the artist’s workshop. The Virgin Mary with the Christ Child enthroned belongs to an early period in Botticelli’s career when he was not yet operating with a large team of assistants, as later became common practice. This is borne out by comparison with other works datable to the years leading up to about 1470, including a group of experimental early Madonnas, and culminating with the crowning achievement of these years, the commission from the Mercanzia for which Botticelli painted the Fortitude (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; fig. 1).¹

The high quality of the Wantage Madonna, with its sophisticated modelling of the faces and an engaging sense of the figures’ presence, has led to its reassessment as a work by Botticelli himself. Furthermore, its strong connection to his Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, of about 1470, now at the Uffizi—first noted in 1905 but only recently more fully understood thanks to technical examination—suggests this picture constitutes an early instance of Botticelli adapting his designs to new formats (fig. 2).² Smaller in scale than the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece and perhaps making use of the same cartoon, the Wantage Madonna shows meaningful modifications to the Virgin and Child. The findings of infrared reflectography and X-radiography are examined below in greater detail. By the early 19th century, maybe earlier, the painting was in the convent of San Giuliano on via Faenza in Florence. Although its original location may never be determined with certainty, when viewed in relation to the much larger multi-figure altarpiece, its status as a commission for a more modest setting would account for its simpler design. While the more cursory treatment of architectural elements and areas of drapery may be due to the delegation of these parts to an associate, overall the Wantage Madonna stands as a tender example conceived, designed and in large part executed by the young Botticelli himself.

The Virgin is seated on a throne with the Christ Child in her lap. Sensitively painted, both figures direct their gaze at the viewer. They are framed by an arched canopy of polychrome marble, supported by four golden candelabra-shaped columns and set against a sky of graduated blue interspersed with a few delicate clouds. The Child raises his right hand in benediction, while with his left he clasps the little finger of his mother’s hand. She gently supports his body with both hands and at the same time gathers round him a white cloth, more densely painted than his diaphanous undergarment. The Virgin’s blue mantle is edged with gold and secured by a golden clasp in the form of a six-winged cherub. Her robe and shoes are reds of different hue. Her head is covered in dark drapery with a similar gold border; a transparent white veil rests lightly on her fair wavy hair and falls below her shoulders.³ The architectural setting, including the floor with its alternating slabs of red, black and white marble, adopts a system of perspective with a central vanishing point. The picture’s gilded pillars have earned it the epithet ‘La Madonna dei pilastrini d’oro’.⁴ Executed in burnished water gilding on a reddish-brown bole and embellished with punch work in foliate patterns, the columns adopt a classicizing form that evokes those designed in Verrocchio’s workshop where Botticelli probably completed his training (fig. 3).

The pose of the Madonna and Child echoes that of the central figures in The Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts Mary Magdalene, Catherine, John the Baptist, Francis, Cosmas and Damian now in the Uffizi, although on a reduced scale (fig. 2; Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence).⁵ Known as the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, the work is generally dated to around 1470 and is considered to be not only Botticelli’s first large-scale painting but also one of his first altarpieces. The configuration of the Madonna and Child is very similar, with some significant modifications. Most obvious are the changes to the Virgin’s face—specifically her gaze—compared with the dark-haired Virgin in the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece. The eyes of the Wantage Madonna are raised rather than downcast; the tilt of her face subtly adapted to a different vantage point, most evident in the sophisticated modelling of her nose and lips (her left nostril, for example, is foreshortened and convincingly half-hidden; see detail). There are many other subtle adjustments. The face of the Christ Child in the Wantage Madonna is less wide than in the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece; his left foot reaches further across, his chubby legs are less distended, his proportions more compact. The curious hook of the Christ Child’s hand with two middle fingers tucked away is replaced here with him clasping his mother’s little finger (fig. 4).

The infrared reflectogram shows the detailed extent of the planning before the painting stage was begun (fig. 5).⁶ The composition’s elements were set out using a complex combination of drawing, ruling and incisions for the architecture and areas intended to be gilded. The underdrawing comprises an initial preparatory drawing in a dry medium and areas of brushed liquid drawing. Ruled and incised lines setting out the position of the columns, canopied throne and floor suggest a vanishing point at the Virgin’s chest. Square-sectioned vertical lines for the columns—wider for the pair at the front and more closely spaced for the pair at the rear to account for their recession in space—demarcate the areas of incised outlining for their gilded and tooled form, showing they were part of the same design stage. Linear parallel hatching in a dry medium is used to work up the figures and garments, modelling the draperies, as well as the flesh areas, particularly for the Christ Child. Broader brushed liquid drawing is used primarily to delineate drapery folds. Although no major pentimenti are apparent, numerous modifications have been made; these include adjustments to the Virgin’s jawline, neckline and shoulder contour, as well as the position of fingers of both her hands and the Christ Child’s hands, elbows and feet (fig. 6). Relatively few changes are made from the underdrawing to the painted stage; the most obvious are the shortening of the Virgin’s veil and alterations to the flow of the drapery.

Similarities in the way that incisions and perspective lines have been used in the Wantage Madonna have been noted with those in the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece. In both, the Virgin’s position is framed by an arched niche and the placement of her feet on the chequered floor follows the arrangement Botticelli first executed for the larger altarpiece. Yet rather than replicating the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, the many nuances in the Wantage Madonna suggest a freer interpretation of the model. Recent technical examination of the Uffizi panel has shown Botticelli’s method of continual revision and adjustment to the design. This is evident, for example, in the numerous changes made to the figures, especially the baby, and the insertion of the dais over a previous incised and fully painted rendering of the paved floor.⁷ As TSR’s report on the Wantage Madonna concludes: ‘Certainly, the reflectogram appears to have much in common with the infrared image of the Pala di Sant'Ambrogio with the wide range of drawing types including use of loose liquid and wash-like strokes to delineate the drapery folds and dry ruling in the architecture’. Embellished with gilded surface decoration, the smaller painting was likely intended for a patron seeking a small altarpiece for private devotion, reprising a pose already established.

Attribution and dating
Among the early commentators on The Virgin and Child enthroned, Wilhelm von Bode was one of the few who recognised it as an autograph painting by Botticelli. In a handwritten letter from him as Director of the Königliche Museen, Berlin, dated 24 August 1903 and addressed to the painting’s then owner, historian and landowner Signor Giovanni Magherini Graziani, Inspector of Monuments (‘Illustre Signor Giovanni Magherini Graziani, Ispettore di Monumenti, Poggitazzi, Terranove Bracciolini, Prov. d’Arezzo’) he expresses his views on the picture’s authorship as a Botticelli and on its dating. Although others were later to assign it to Botticelli’s early manner, Bode judged it to be from a later phase (‘Mi pare affatto dal maestro, però non credo che sia della sua prima epoca ma piuttosto gia da un tempo gia avanzato.’). Letters to Lady Wantage (1837–1920) from Sir Thomas Gibson Carmichael (1859–1926), who was negotiating the picture’s acquisition on her behalf, shed light not only on the protracted negotiations for the acquisition but also on the art market in Florence in the early twentieth century, naming the major players and rival collectors, and offering telling insights into the competition for pictures. Bernard Berenson is named in letters Carmichael sent in April 1904 to Lady Wantage. While in Siena he learns Berenson went to see it, apparently with a buyer in mind; it is not clear whom he was advising but we learn from Carmichael that he asked Elia Volpi, the dealer handling the sale, for a photograph. Two decades later, in 1924, Berenson published the Wantage Madonna, referring to it by its location in the Wantage collection at Lockinge House. In his article he used it to reconstruct the original appearance of the heads of the Virgin and Child in the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece, which had been repainted in the style of Perugino, and to reaffirm the attribution of the latter to Botticelli, recognising in the facial type of the Virgin in the Lockinge painting a similarity with the Venus in the Primavera (fig. 7).

According to another of Carmichael’s letters dated 27 April 1904, Count Carlo Gamba (b. 1870), collector and art historian, went with fellow collector and scholar Charles Loeser (1864–1928) several times to see the picture, pronouncing it an undoubted Botticelli (‘they had wished to find every fault they could with it; but they were obliged to come to the conclusion that it really is by Botticelli. Loeser thinks it a most important picture, and one that will turn out to be probably one of the earliest if not the earliest known works of the artist.’).⁸ The support for the attribution to Botticelli in the early twentieth century was soon tempered. Over subsequent decades the brief mentions of the picture in much of the literature, often without direct knowledge of it, treat it as a workshop replica of the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece. Lightbown too, whose view of Botticelli’s work was restrictive, listed it as a workshop painting.

A more positive stance on the picture’s attribution was taken by Everett Fahy, who classified it as Botticelli in his photo files now at the Fondazione Zeri, Bologna.⁹ Nicoletta Pons included the Wantage Madonna as an early work in her complete catalogue on Botticelli published in 1989. Following recent inspection of high-resolution digital images, Dott.ssa Pons is convinced that the figures are by the young Botticelli.¹⁰ In her opinion the Christ Child is very like Lippi—Botticelli’s teacher Fra Filippo (c. 1406–1469)—and she remarks that the Virgin’s head is inclined in the same way as the Fortitude at the Uffizi. For her, the weaknesses in the architecture may accord with the beginnings of a less experienced albeit brilliant painter.¹¹ Christopher Daly, who has seen the picture in high-resolution digital images and in person, believes it to be an autograph work from around 1470, noting that it seems to be of very good quality.¹² In his opinion ‘the strong sculptural quality, the subtle tempera glazes in the Virgin’s head and the forcefulness of her gaze seem consistent with Botticelli himself’. As he explains, in the early 1470s Botticelli was operating primarily alongside artists who, even if initially ‘pupils’, worked more as associates and collaborators rather than as subordinate assistants; foremost among them Filippino Lippi (c. 1457–1504), who is known to have started as a pupil but quickly moved up to collaborator,¹³ and Betto Pialla, still a ‘name without works’ but who arrived in Botticelli’s workshop after a ten-year training with Neri di Bicci (1419–1491) so must have been more of a compagno.¹⁴ At this early period Botticelli did not yet rely on a large team of assistants, as he did later in his career after about 1480 when he ran a studio that turned out serial replicas. While Dr Daly does not rule out the involvement of an associate in the subsidiary parts of the picture, he considers it to be marginal. The weaker parts can be imputed to it being a more modest commission than for example the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece. Keith Christiansen (formerly John Pope-Hennessy Chairman, European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art), on the basis of images made post recent treatment, thinks it a very fine picture and substantially agrees with the analysis of Daly that the Wantage Madonna is an early work by Botticelli.¹⁵

As Dr Daly has remarked, the attribution of the Wantage Madonna to the young Botticelli can be substantiated by comparisons with other works of about 1470, such as the Fortitude, already mentioned (fig. 1). The painting is also consistent with private devotional images made by the artist at the beginning of his career. Daly notes that Botticelli was quite experimental in his first years of activity and many of his early Madonnas show awkward elements, especially in their spatial arrangement, citing as examples the Madonna of Humility with Five Angels at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 8),¹⁶ and a less well known Madonna, formerly in the collection of Gervase Elwes, that was sold at Sotheby’s, London, on 28 November 1962, lot 90, and is now in a private collection.¹⁷ Analogous elements to ones detected in the present work may also be found, for example, in one of Botticelli’s earliest paintings, the Virgin and Child with an angel, at the Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio, with its cramped architectural setting, approximate rendering of marble, plain backdrop of wall and sky and stylised decorative elements in the form of a garland (fig. 9).¹⁸

Furthermore, as Dr Daly has observed, Botticelli’s interest in Verrocchiesque elements—here the gilt pilasters—is attested by the presence of similar motifs in other early works, such as the Virgin’s lectern in his Annunciation of about 1472 in the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York (fig. 10),¹⁹ and the two panels of Sibyls at the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, one of which is given to Botticelli (fig. 11), the other to the young Filippino on Botticelli’s design.²⁰ The Virgin in the Wantage panel is posed in much the same way as the seated Sibyls—body facing forward and wide-kneed stance—and has the same elongated torso, an anatomical hallmark also of the Fortitude. Indeed, this figure type was to serve the artist well in other devotional contexts, not least for his Madonna del Roseto (Uffizi, Florence), in which the Virgin and Child are enthroned beneath an arched canopy of polychrome marble, supported by four columns in much the same vein.²¹

Note on Provenance
By the mid-19th century, if not before, the painting was in the Oratorio of San Giuliano, in the Convent of San Giuliano in via Faenza, Florence. The property was later bought and rebuilt by the Calasanzian order, which had been founded by St Giuseppe Calasanzio, a Spanish Catholic priest and promoter of free education for the poor in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Federico Fantozzi in his guide to Florence and its surroundings, published in 1842, describes in via Faenza the home of the Colzi family, which together with the adjacent Oratory formed the Convent of San Giuliano, whose foundation dated back to the mid-14th century. Following its suppression in 1808, it was reduced to its diminished state. In the Oratory Fantozzi lists a Crucifixion by Andrea del Castagno and two anonymous works, one of which Lightbown identifies as the present painting, set on the right-hand altar in place of an altarpiece by Mariotto Albertinelli: ‘un'effigie di Nostra Donna al primo Altare a destra, d’Ignoto ma valente pittore’.²² It is not yet known at what date the painting was moved outside Florence by the Calasanzian Order to their convalescent home for sick brethren, some thirty kilometres south-east of the city but we learn from its former owner Giovanni Magherini Graziani (1852–1924) that it was once worshipped there.

A letter in the possession of the Loyd family dated 5 February 1905 from Magherini Graziani to Lady Wantage, who had acquired the picture the previous year, sheds light on its provenance.²³ He reports that in earlier times the panel was venerated in the small chapel attached to a group of farmhouses called Comezzano, near the village of Vaggio, about 4 km from Figline Valdarno, his birthplace in the Province of Florence. He goes on to explain that at Comezzano there was in ancient times (‘era anticamente’) a convalescent home for the sick bretheren of the Calasanziano Order and the Scuole Pie of Florence. The property, including the chapel and the painting, later passed into Magherini Graziani’s family. The picture was removed from the altar and another put in its place when the chapel was restored. This he describes as taking place in recent times, presumably not long before 1903, the year he sold the Virgin and Child enthroned to the dealer Elia Volpi, in Florence.

A deeply cultured man, Magherini Graziani was profoundly interested in art history—publishing books on Michelangelo and on Raphael’s early work—and in local historical research. In 1890 this resulted in a multi-volume publication on the history of Città di Castello, in the province of Perugia, where he held the post of Ispettore dei Monumenti. He married Countess Maddalena Libri Graziani, a descendant of the Conti Libri, one of the oldest noble families of Florence, and the Conti Graziani of Città di Castello, acquiring name and title and the estate of Poggitazzi, Terranove Bracciolini, near Arezzo. He also had a residence on via Pinti in Florence. In his letter to Lady Wantage Magherini Graziani adds that the picture was held in great veneration because they still preserved in the family home two metal crowns that adorned it. This explains the presence in an undated early black and white photograph of the picture held in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek of visible fixing holes around the heads of the Virgin and Child. In the case of the Virgin this corresponds with the vestige of an elliptical halo near the upper left edge of the arch, probably a later modification as there is no indication of it in the IRR or X-radiograph.²⁴ The halos in their present circular form consist of matt gilding applied to a brown mordant in a pattern of dots and serpentine lines of a type consistent with other works by Botticelli. The photograph, which probably dates from around 1900, also shows how the picture was once in a rectangular frame, the vertical sides in the form of classicizing pilasters with foliate capitals and with a winged putto in each of the spandrels.²⁵ It is likely that the work was re-framed and skilful restoration carried out on the painting before its sale to Lady Wantage in 1904. More recently, following thorough technical examination of the picture, surface dirt was removed from the varnished paint and gilding, thereby much improving its overall legibility.

We are grateful to all those consulted for their opinions and for their help in the compilation of this note.

¹ Inv. 1890 n. 1606; tempera grassa on panel, 167 x 87 cm.

² Inv. 1890 n. 8657; tempera on panel, 170 x 194 cm.

³ Striated parallel brushstrokes characteristic of tempera are manifest in some areas, while some glazes may have a component of a drying oil, for instance the lining of the Virgin’s cloak, once probably purple now altered to brown.

⁴ Temple 1905, p. 15.

⁵ Entering the collection of the Uffizi from the Benedictine convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Florence – probably not its original location – little is known about its early history. The prominence given to Saints Cosmas and Damian within the altarpiece may link it to the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, or to the Medici family themselves, for whom Botticelli created some of his most celebrated works.

⁶ TSR, report no. 20220817A.

⁷ Opificio dell Pietre Dure, April–December 2018; OPD youtube video https://youtu.be/t3P0cAvsb5Q and http://www.adottaunoperadarte.it/la-presentazione-del-restauro.

⁸ 27 April 1904, from Carmichael, 14 Piazza d’Azeglio, Florence, to Lady Wantage.

⁹ Fototeca Fahy, Fondazione Zeri, no. 14510.

¹⁰ Email communication dated 8 March 2023 and 3 October 2024.

¹¹ ‘Le debolezze dell'architettura possono ben accordarsi con gli esordi di un pur geniale pittore’; email communication, 8 March 2023.

¹² Email communication dated 23 January 2023 and 3 October 2024.

¹³ In June 1472 Filippino, aged 14, is recorded in the register of the Compagnia of San Luca as entering the workshop of Botticelli ‘Filippo di Filippo da Prato dipintore chon Sandro di Botticello’ (A. Cecchi, Botticelli, Milan 2005, p. 66).

¹⁴ Benedetto di Domenico d’Andrea, called Betto Pialla, one of Botticelli’s first known collaborators named in a document dated 30 January 1473 as ‘pictore in apotheca sive domo Sandri Botticelli pittoris in Via Nuova’ (Cecchi 2005, pp. 60, 66). Born in 1445, he and Sandro were the same age. Betto is recorded in Neri di Bicci’s Ricordanze as entering his workshop on 21 August 1463, where he stayed until 1 January 1470. He matriculated at the Compagnia of San Luca in 1472. According to Cecchi no independent works by him are known and no other records of his activity have been found. He died in 1497. On Betto Pialla see also C. Daly, ‘In the circle of Botticelli: associates, followers, collaborators’, in Botticelli designer: actes des colloques (Paris, Institut Culturel Italien, 16 décembre 2021), A. Debenedetti and M. Gianeselli (eds), Paris (forthcoming).

¹⁵ Email communication dated 30 November 2023 and 14 March 2024. Pointing to its connections to the Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece—particularly the Child—Christiansen notes that the Virgin’s features recall those of St Catherine in the larger altarpiece, suggesting that they have been adapted from those.

¹⁶ Inv. MI 478; tempera on panel, 58 x 40 cm.

¹⁷ 74.93 x 47 cm.; Fototeca Fahy, Fondazione Zeri, Bologna, no. 106346; M. Boskovits, ‘Una mostra su Botticelli e Filippino’, Arte cristiana, vol. XCII, no. 825, 2004, pp. 409–20, fig. 10, as Botticelli.

¹⁸ Inv. MFA 852.1.595; 115.2 x 77 cm.; Lightbown 1978, vol. II, p. 12, no. A3; reproduced in colour in Cecchi 2005, p. 47. Recently dated as early as c. 1460–65 by Ana Debenedetti in Botticelli: Artiste & Designer, exh. cat., Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 2021, no. 1, reproduced in colour.

¹⁹ No. 1971.10; tempera on panel, 17.8 x 26.8 cm.; Pons 1989, p. 58, no. 24, reproduced.

²⁰ Respectively nos JBS 35 and JBS 36; one: 74.2 x 140.3 cm.; the other: 74.3 x 141 cm.; reproduced in colour in Botticelli Drawings, F. Rinaldi (ed.), exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, New Haven and London, pp. 128–35, nos 18a and 18b. Dated to c. 1465–70 and c. 1472.

²¹ Inv. 1890 n. 1601; tempera on panel, 124 x 64 cm.; Lightbown 1978, vol. II, pp. 18–19, no. B2, reproduced.

²² Fantozzi 1842, p. 498: ‘an effigy of Our Lady on the first altar on the right by an unknown but skilled painter’).

²³ Fascinating letters about the work’s acquisition have been preserved in the family archive, shedding light on negotiations between Lady Wantage, her intermediary Sir Thomas Gibson Carmichael and the dealer Elia Volpi in Florence.

²⁴ Possibly there were further holes for affixing gems.

²⁵ We are grateful to Christopher Daly for drawing our attention to it.