Madonna col Bambino e melagrana

This panel is barely bigger than a hand, painted in Florence around 1477 by Lorenzo di Credi, who shared a workshop with the young Leonardo under their teacher Verrocchio. That closeness has caused centuries of argument. The smooth modelling and careful finish are so like the master's shop that the picture was once given to Leonardo himself, before scholars settled it on di Credi, Verrocchio's favourite, who took over the studio when the older man died. Mary holds a pomegranate out to the child, a fruit whose split red seeds were a long-standing sign of the suffering to come, offered here as gently as a toy. Behind them a thread of landscape recedes into pale distance, the kind of soft atmospheric depth the Verrocchio circle was learning to paint in these years.