The Virgin and Child

In the late 1480s the Certosa di Pavia, a vast Carthusian monastery south of Milan, was one of the great building sites of its day, and Bergognone was in effect its house painter. Look past the Virgin, on either side of the dark cloth behind her. Monks in white habits walk in the grounds, one beside a layman and his dog, and the church front stands as it was then, unfinished, with rough masonry, bare beams and a shelter for the workmen. The Child plays with a string of red rosary beads, and the little book on the sill is open at Matins, the first prayers of the day. In 1866 a Milanese owner offered it to Sir Charles Eastlake, the Gallery's director, not knowing he had died the year before. His widow bought it, and the Gallery acquired it at her sale in 1894.