Madonna and Child

For a long time nobody was quite sure this small panel was really by Cima da Conegliano. The great connoisseur Bernard Berenson took a middle line, calling it an early work from the painter's youth, while others doubted the name outright. Two cleanings, one in 1984 and another in 2010, settled the question and returned it firmly to Cima, a painter from the hill town of Conegliano north of Venice who built quiet, carefully lit devotional pictures. He seems to have liked this design, because an almost identical Madonna, also dated 1504, hangs in Este near Padua, and a copyist reproduced it again soon after. The child stands on a low ledge against an open landscape, close enough that you meet him at eye level.