Madonna and Child

On 24 August 1870, during the German siege of Strasbourg, shells set fire to the Aubette, the building on Place Kléber that housed the city's collection of paintings, and almost all of it burned. The next year Strasbourg became part of the new German Empire, and by the 1890s it was buying pictures to start again. This small Florentine panel was bought in London in 1893, paid for out of money a local benefactor had left for the purpose. Mary sits at a window against a red curtain, with a river, trees and a far mountain opening on either side. The naked Child on her lap plays with her transparent veil. Lorenzo di Credi's workshop repeated the design more than once, and copies of it survive in Bergamo, Turin and two American university museums.