Virgin and Child with a Swallow

This accomplished Virgin and Child by Francesco Pesellino, dating from the mid-1450s, was one of the most reproduced paintings in fifteenth-century Florence. It was a pivotal work in an unusual and prolific copying enterprise. From the 1450s to the mid-1490s, the composition appeared in thirty-eight panel paintings executed by a workshop close to Pesellino and Filippo Lippi. These copies and variants were produced using a mechanical transfer method – stencil-like pounced cartoons, rubbed over with charcoal dust. A very similar painting in Esztergom, Hungary, is probably also an autograph work by Pesellino. The modeling is very delicate and the brushwork fluid. Underdrawing is visible through the transparent paint film and shows that changes were made in the drapery and body contours of both the Virgin and the Christ Child.