Attributed to Benozzo Gozzoli

In the National Gallery in London this name goes on a small panel, the Virgin and Child enthroned beneath a red and gold canopy held up by angels. The museum labels it probably by Benozzo Gozzoli, and the words attributed to here carry the same caution. It means the specialists judge Gozzoli the likeliest hand, while no signature, contract or payment record proves it.

The case rests on comparison. An illuminated manuscript in the British Library, made in the 1440s for a member of the papal court, is thought to be Gozzoli's work, and the panel shares its small scale, its bright colour and its fine gold detail. Gozzoli was in Rome in those years as the principal assistant of Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and painter, working on frescoes in the Vatican that no longer survive. The panel is dated about 1447 to 1450, some ten years before Gozzoli covered the walls of the Medici palace chapel in Florence with the Journey of the Magi.

Earlier owners were less cautious. At a London sale in 1829 the panel was sold as a Giotto, and in 1881 it went under the hammer as a Fra Angelico. It reached the National Gallery from the Cook collection in Richmond in 1945.