Madonna and Child

Lorenzo di Credi (Lorenzo d'Andrea d'Oderigo)

about 1490–1500

Tempera possibly mixed with oil on panel, Oil

J. Paul Getty Museum

A woman in blue and green robes holds a baby on her lap, while another figure to the left offers a small bouquet of flowers in a glass dish. A landscape with buildings and water is visible through architectural columns on either side. An artist in Lorenzo di Credi's large workshop probably made this painting under the master's direction, adapting elements from various other paintings. The apprentice or journeyman took the composition from an altarpiece begun by another artist and finished by Lorenzo. The two landscapes in the background look quite different, since they derive from two different landscape traditions. The apprentice copied the landscape with a water mill on the right from an altarpiece by Hans Memling, whose Northern Europeans landscape paintings were being imported to Florence around this time, and took the landscape on the left from other works b