Virgin and Child with Saint Jerome

When the Boston collector Mrs Walter Scott Fitz bought this panel from the dealers Duveen Brothers in March 1920, it came to her as the work of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, an older painter in Perugia. In those years a good many small Umbrian panels of the 1470s went under Fiorenzo's name, and several have since been given to the young Pinturicchio, as this one has. The museum dates it to about 1475 to 1480.

Before Duveen it had been with a collector in Trieste, and before that with Giuseppe Bachetoni, mayor of San Gemini, a small town near Narni. An agent passed on a story that it had come out of the Vatican through a member of the family who was a cardinal, and the museum's own notes call this only a supposition. Saint Jerome stands behind the Virgin in a cardinal's red hat, and the Child holds a wisp of transparent veil. The Virgin's mantle now looks almost black. It was once a brilliant blue, and it is the only passage that has darkened in a panel otherwise in excellent condition.