The Madonna and Child

The most accomplished painters at Perugia in the mid-fifteenth century were Benedetto Bonfigli and Bartolommeo Caporali, documented respectively from 1445 and 1442. Both were aware of the altarpiece painted for the city by Fra Angelico and of the work of both Benozzo Gozzoli, who had worked at nearby Foligno, and Domenico Veneziano who had been active more briefly in Perugia itself. The two worked together in 1467, and their artistic personalities were closely interrelated.
This refined panel has traditionally been given to Bonfigli, and is closely related to other works by him, for instance, the Virgin’s headdress is similar to those in the Perugia Adoration of the Magi (Pinacoteca Nazionale, no. 140) and the panel at El Paso (Kress Collection, no. 1313). However, the incisive character of the execution is more precisely paralleled in a number of meticulous small panels, like the London, National Gallery Adoration of the Magi (no. 1843) and the Oxford Christ (Ashmolean Museum, no. A803), both of which are considered by Filippo Todini to be by Caporali (La Pittura Umbra, Milan, 1989, I, pp. 50 and 51, II, figs. 804 and 812). The panel was evidently intended for private devotion, possibly for a female patron as would apparently be the case half a century later with the small pictures of the subject painted by the young Raphael.