A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

286. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

Francesco Tacconi (Cremonese: painted 1464-1490).

The only signed picture by this painter still in existence. He was a native of Cremona and worked there: he and his brother pleased the Cremonese so much by painting in the Town Hall that the artists were given an exemption from taxes. But he may be classed as a Venetian, for he was an imitator of Giovanni Bellini. This picture at once recalls Bellini's No. 280, and is in fact a copy of a Madonna by that painter in the Chiesa degli Scalzi at Venice.