Attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio

Attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio is the cataloguer's way of saying that a picture is probably by the Florentine master's own hand, without promising it. It stands one step closer to him than workshop of, the label for pictures made in his family shop by brothers, in-laws and assistants working from his designs.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston uses both labels on two small devotional panels, and the gap between them shows what the phrase means. A Virgin kneeling before the Child, from the late 1480s or early 1490s, is filed under the workshop. A tiny tabernacle from the early 1480s, with the Virgin and Child below and her Coronation in the arched top, is attributed to Ghirlandaio himself. The workshop panel is the larger of the two, about half a metre high, while the tabernacle measures some 17 centimetres.