Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, 'The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Two Angels', probably about 1490-1500

The Virgin Mary sits on a stepped bench in front of a bed of roses, the infant Christ resting on her lap. He hangs on to his mother’s veil, raising his other hand in a gesture of greeting. Both figures make direct eye contact with the viewer, while the angels beside them hold a jewelled crown over the head of the Virgin. It is painted in gold, like the haloes and the eight-pointed star on the Virgin’s blue robe. A young Saint John the Baptist, who wears a garment of camel hair, kneels in the foreground, his hands crossed over his chest as he looks on in devotion.

Circular paintings like this were very sought-after in fifteenth-century Florence. Better known as tondi (from the Italian for ‘round’), such paintings often decorated Florentine households, where they provided a visual aid for prayer. The workshop of Sandro Botticelli specialised in their production, as three further examples in the National Gallery’s collection demonstrate: The Virgin and Child with Saint John and an Angel, The Adoration of the Kings and The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist.

This tondo is very closely related to one preserved in the Galleria Pallavicini in Rome. Both are probably based on a lost painting by Botticelli, the popularity of which encouraged the production of copies. The motif of angels crowning the Virgin reappears in one of the most famous of Botticelli’s tondi, the so-called ‘Madonna del Magnificat’ (Uffizi, Florence). It is named after the Magnificat (the hymn to Mary that is depicted in an open book in the painting), which may have been read or sung in front of it.

Charles Eastlake, first Director of the National Gallery, acquired this tondo in Italy in 1855, and it was one of the first works associated with Botticelli to enter the Gallery’s collection. With the exception of two paintings by Lorenzo Monaco, the Gallery did not hold any early Italian paintings; a growing number of people felt that the institution should trace the development of Western European painting from its beginnings to the present. But the purchase stirred some controversy at the time: some felt that the painting was not of a high enough quality. While such criticism was justified – other works made in Botticelli’s workshop are of a much higher standard – the Gallery went on to assemble the most important collection of paintings by Botticelli and his workshop outside the artist’s native Florence.