Madona com o Menino Escrevendo e um Bispo

Pinturicchio painted this in Rome in the mid-1490s, when he was the favourite painter of Pope Alexander VI, the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia. A cousin of the pope commissioned it and had it shipped to the Borgia family's home region in Spain, probably to mark his appointment as a bishop in 1495. That is how a Roman panel by an Italian master ended up in Valencia, where it remains the only Pinturicchio on public view in the country. The subject is unusual. The Christ Child stands on a small stool writing in a book the Virgin holds open for him, dressed almost like a young scholar, while a bishop kneels at the side. For a long time the panel was dismissed as workshop work, dulled by old overpaint, until cleaning brought back the fine detail and rich surface that mark Pinturicchio's own hand.