Virgin and Child

In 1508 Raphael left Florence for Rome, summoned by Pope Julius II, leaving behind in Florence a run of Madonnas painted for the city's families. Andrea del Sarto was then in his early twenties, and the Museum of Fine Arts believes this Virgin and Child, painted around 1509 or 1510, is based on one particular Raphael Virgin and Child that is now lost. Most of the panel's later life was spent in England. It may be the Madonna listed in 1827 in the collection of Joseph Strutt, of the Derby cotton-spinning family, and it certainly belonged to his nephew Edward Strutt, Lord Belper, who lent it to the Nottingham Castle Museum in 1878 as number 49 in the show. The number written on the back of the panel is 48, perhaps a slip. The Belper family sold it in 1960, and the Massachusetts collector William Coolidge bought it from the London dealers Agnew's in 1971 and left it to the museum.