Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

Virgin and Child with Two Angels

Sandro Botticelli · 1485–95

Provenance

Ownership history

Possibly Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence [Fahy 1969, p. 16 suggested that it might be the painting described by Vasari, “Very beautiful, too, is a little round picture by [Botticelli’s] hand that is seen in the apartment of the Prior of the Angeli in Florence, in which the figures are small but very graceful and wrought with beautiful consideration,” in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, tr. by Gaston Du C. de Vere, New York, 1979, p. 675]. Julius Böhler, Munich [according to a letter from Böhler to Everett Fahy dated January 20, 1969 in curatorial files]; sold by Böhler to Max Epstein (d. 1954), Chicago, by 1928 [according to the letter cited above, as well as Old Masters 1928 and the Chicago 1928 exhibition]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1954; on loan to his widow, Leola Epstein, Chicago, 1955–68.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

The Art Institute of Chicago, Old Masters from the Collection of Cyrus H. McCormick and Max Epstein, July 25–Oct. 1, 1928 (no cat.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, Summer Exhibition: Old Masters Lent by Max Epstein, July 24–Oct. 12, 1930 (no cat.).
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, July 1–Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 107.

Literature

Old Masters in the Collection of Max Epstein (Chicago, 1928), ill., n. p.
Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 12 (The Hague, 1931), p. 171.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 29.
Everett Fahy, “A Tondo by Sandro Botticelli,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 4 (1969), pp. 14–25, figs. 1, 12, 14.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), pp. 31–32, ill.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972), pp. 33, 321, 571.
The Art Institute of Chicago: 100 Masterpieces (Chicago, 1978), pp. 42–43, no. 6, ill.
Ronald Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, vol. 2 (London, 1978), p. 83, no. B74, ill.
John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America (New York, 1979), p. 28.
Nicoletta Pons, Botticelli: catalogo completo (Milan, 1989), p.78, fig. 80.
Ronald Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work (New York, 1989), pl. 89.
Barbara Deimling, Sandro Botticelli, 1444/45–1510 (Cologne, 1993), pp. 69, 95.

Comparables