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

782. MADONNA AND CHILD.

Botticelli (Florentine: 1447-1510). See under 1034.

See also (p. xx)

Probably only a "school picture." Most of the old masters kept schools, or shops, in which several pupils served as apprentices and worked at pictures under the master's directions. The sale of such pictures under the master's name was (and is) a very common occurrence, and even in those days forged signatures were not unusual.