Virgin and Child

The museum records a question in this panel's history and leaves it open. In 1982 the art historian Mojmír Frinta, who studied the punched patterns tooled into gold grounds, published an article on Icilio Federico Joni, a Sienese restorer who in the early 20th century also painted new panels in the old Sienese manner that were sold as genuine. In it he mentioned an old photograph of a Madonna that matches this one in many respects, annotated as belonging in 1919 to Paolo Paolini, a dealer in Rome. Frinta suggested that the photograph shows either this panel in an overpainted state or a different painting altogether.

The other early document is an authentication by the Italian art historian Giacomo De Nicola, who died in 1926. He wrote that he had known the picture since it belonged to a Signor Grazzini in Florence. In 1936 the Roman dealer Aldo Jandolo sold it to Boston for 16,200 dollars, and the museum still gives it to Lippo Memmi only as an attribution.