Madonna of the Carnations

When this panel reached Brera in 1808 from San Francesco della Vigna in Venice, it came in as a Giovanni Bellini, with a signature along the lower edge to prove it. The signature was not his. It had been added at some point before anyone here catalogued the picture, and the attribution held for more than 60 years. In 1871 Joseph Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, two writers then working their way through Italy sorting pictures back to their painters, recognised it instead as an early Andrea Solari. He painted it around 1495, during the years he spent in Venice with his brother Cristoforo, a sculptor, and the confusion is easy to understand, since the soft light and the close, quiet mood are exactly what he had gone to Venice to learn. The pose of the Child, though, comes from Leonardo.