BUTINONE, BERNARDINO

follower (?) of

MADONNA AND CHILD INSIDE AN ARCH

This picture was regarded as the work of an unknown master of the Padua school while in the Vyazemskii collection. Later Lazarev attributed it to a follower of Bernardino Butinone, and the work went down in art history with this attribution. The upper part of the figure of the Madonna and the depiction of the Christ Child can be traced back to Leonardo's Benois Madonna, which provides clues to its date.

Provenance: acquired in Italy in the mid-19th century by P.P.Vyazemskii, held in the Ostafievo estate near Moscow (Vyazemskii-Sheremetiev collection); transferred from the Ostafievo museum-estate to the Pushkin Museum in 1924.