Virgin and Child

The Artist: Dieric Bouts was initially mentioned by Lodovico Guicciardini as “Dirick d’Haarlem” in his Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, altrimenti detti Germania inferiore.[1] According to Karel van Mander, whose Schilder-boeck of 1604 described the life and works of 250 European painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Dieric Bouts was one of the founders of the Haarlem School of painting.[2] It is not known with whom he trained, nor when he left the north Netherlands to settle in Leuven, where he became the official city painter in 1468.[3] There Bouts produced major works for the Sint-Peterskerk (the Holy Sacrament Altarpiece, 1464–68, still in situ) and the Town Hall (the Justice of Emperor Otto III, 1473, and completed about 1480; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels).[4] After Dieric died in 1475, his sons, Dieric the Younger (ca. 1448–1490) and Aelbecht (1451/55–1549), inherited their father’s workshop and its contents. While Dieric the Younger apparently continued in his father’s style, Aelbrecht embraced an increasingly more descriptive mode with strong physical types echoing contemporary Antwerp Mannerism.[5] Aelbecht’s major work is the Assumption of the Virgin Triptych of about 1495–1500 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels). Dieric’s legacy was ensured in the sixteenth century through the production by his sons of copies after their father’s most popular compositions.

The Painting: Wearing a simple blue robe and mantle, with a plain dark band encircling her head, a mother tenderly holds her naked infant. The utter simplicity of this presentation and the lack of haloes on either figure emphasize the human rather than divine aspect of the figures. Yet the melancholy expression of the Virgin’s face denotes her prescience that her son will sacrifice his life for the redemption of humankind at the Crucifixion. The cloth beneath the Christ Child suggests the winding cloth used to wrap his body for burial after his death. The pose of the Virgin and Child—embracing cheek-to-cheek with their lips about to meet in a kiss—is derived from Byzantine models, particularly the Virgin Eleousa (Ainsworth 1993–95 and 2004; see The Met, 2008.352). Such models were known in the Netherlands when they were brought back from Crusader expeditions that engaged the Valois dukes, Louis IX of France, and the dukes of Burgundy with the East from 1096 to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. Many Byzantine icons, and copies of them by Italian painters, reached the North by well-traveled routes through Italy. However, beginning in the fourteenth century there was also an economic exchange between Crete and Flanders that first developed over precious metals and continued in the fifteenth century with the export of wine from Greece and spices from India. Flanders, in return, sent cloth to Crete.[6]

The most famous of these icons was Notre-Dame de Grâce (commonly known as the Cambrai Madonna, ca. 1340, Cambrai Cathedral; see fig. 1 above) that was brought from Rome to Cambrai by Canon Fursy de Bruille in 1440. Believed to be a portrait of the Virgin and Child painted by Saint Luke himself, the painting—which actually is a fourteenth-century Sienese replica of an earlier Byzantine icon—was repeatedly copied well into the seventeenth century.[7] The exact source of The Met’s painting is not known, but it may have been inspired by the many copies of the Virgin of Vladimir (a twelth-century icon, State Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow; fig. 2), one of the most famous icons that was renowned for its purported miracle-working powers. The impetus for the production of replicas of such renowned images was their perceived religious potency and the hoped-for the “trickle-down effect” of their redemptive or curative powers for both the body and the soul.

The Met’s Virgin and Child was equally dependent upon changes that were taking place in devotional practice and literature in the fifteenth century in The Netherlands, especially with the exegesis on the Song of Songs. This Old Testament book describes in poetry the sensual relationship between the bride and the bridegroom and, as a result of the explanations of Rupert of Deutz (before 1070–1129), it increasingly was interpreted in terms of Marian piety. This interpretation held that the Incarnation of Christ in the Virgin Mary represented the love union between God and humankind. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) preached on this theological notion in many sermons that helped to spread the popularity of the Song of Songs throughout northern Europe. Such diminutive and precious paintings as The Met’s Virgin and Child, represented as the loving relationship of a mother and her son, emphasized human emotions, and enhanced the intense inner experience of private devotion (Ainsworth 2004).

The Attribution and Date: In the earliest literature on this painting, scholars considered its attribution among the works of Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes (see References) until Georges Hulin de Loo proposed Dieric Bouts (Hulin de Loo 1924). This attribution has not been challenged since, and most agree with Snyder that it “displays the sturdier Dutch qualities of [Bouts’s] early style” about 1455–60 (Snyder 1985). Here the subtle modeling of the flesh and the special attention given to the tactile qualities of plump fingers, knuckles, and depressions of the Child’s pudgy thigh by the Virgin’s fingers heightens the illusion of living, breathing humans. It shows Bouts’s youthful sensibility and an emphasis on the robust corporeal aspects of the figures rather than the refined, more elegant description of form that he adopted in his later works under the influence of Rogier van der Weyden, such as the Virgin and Child of about 1465 (National Gallery, London; fig. 3).[8]

The popular composition exists in two other very close paintings (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; figs. 4, 5) that presumably were produced in the Bouts’s workshop (see Ainsworth 1993–95).[9] The Bargello replica is closest to The Met painting in size; it exchanges the Virgin’s blue robe for one in red velvet and adds pearls to her headband. The slightly larger San Francisco copy embellishes the composition with a decorative green and gold brocade cloth of honor behind the Virgin, who wears a red rather than blue mantle, and a headband adorned with pearls. The online references relate the various opinions concerning the question of original versus copy among these three examples (see especially Mund 1994, p. 128, and Périer-d’Ieteren 2006, pp. 126–33). The differences between the three are subtle. However, when The Met Virgin and Child is closely compared to the other two examples, it is clear that it is in The Met painting where the cheeks of the Virgin and Christ are most closely pressed together and aligned so that their eyes meet directly in an exchange of deep affection. In the other two paintings, the poses of the mother and child are slightly altered— mostly due to the fact that the head of Christ is turned somewhat outward—modifying the intimacy of the embrace. The features of the faces are also more sharply defined and the contrasts of light and dark more pronounced in the Bargello and San Francisco paintings than in the The Met painting, which exhibits softer, more nuanced handling and execution (compare Figs. 6–8).

What accounts for these differences? The technical study of all three paintings showed variations in the build-up of the paint layers that suggest three different artists at work. Infrared reflectography reveals a similar cursory underdrawing in all three that may indicate a common workshop pattern (fig. 12). The x-radiographs, however, present significant differences in the build-up of lead white paint to establish the volume of forms in the initial paint layers (figs. 9, 10, 11). The Met painting, being the only one closely associated with the technique apparent in Bouts’s autograph paintings, shows the painter’s use of the light-colored ground preparation, touching in the lead-white highlights at the forehead, upper cheek, down the length of the nose, and at the chin and neck to build up a sculptural approach to the heads and the body of the Christ Child.[10] The Bargello version shows a broadly applied layer of lead white to which the painter added some highlights, but not in a way that defines the volume of forms as clearly as in The Met example. Finally, the San Francisco painting reveals a broader application of lead white in discreet, flat zones that describe a system of light and dark but not the sculptural structure of the forms. Finally, these differeces in handling and execution help to explain the varied surface characteristics of the three paintings, and why the Bargello and San Francisco examples appear flatter, less volumetric, and less affecting as images of the tender embrace of a mother and child than we exerience in The Met painting.

With modern-day tools of investigation, we are able to scrutinize the technique and execution of these paintings in order to distinguish one hand from another and to better understand how Bouts achieved his remarkable effects of verisimilitude in the Virgin and Child. For fifteenth-century viewers, Bouts’s accomplishment, above all, was the creation of an image that inspired deep devotion to these holy figures, appearing so lifelike that they seemed to be present.

Maryan W. Ainsworth 2022

[1] Guglielmus Silvius, Anversa 1567, p. 129.
[2] Het schilder-boeck..., Paschier van Wesbusch, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 206.
[3] See Jacob Wisse, Official City Painters in Brabant, 1400–1500: A Documentary and Interpretative Approach, Ph.D. diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1999; and Jacob Wisse, “Distinguishing between Bouts and Stuerbout as Official City Painters,” in Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475), een Vlaams primitive te Leuven, ed. Maurits Smeyers, exh. cat. Sint-Pieterskerk en Predikherenkerk te Leuven, Leuven, 1998, pp. 19–33.
[4] For further information, see Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475), een Vlaams primitive te Leuven, ed. Maurits Smeyers, exh. cat. Sint-Pieterskerk en Predikherenkerk te Leuven Leuven, 1998; and Catheline Périer-d’Ieteren, Dieric Bouts. The Complete Works, Brussels, 2006. For the Holy Sacrament Altarpiece, see Anna Bergmans, ed., Leuven in de Late Middeleeuwen, Dirk Bouts, Het Laatse Avondmaal, Tielt, 1998; for the Justice of Emperor Otto III, see Cyriel Stroo and Pascal Syfer-d’Olne in Cyriel Stroo, Pascal Syfer-d’Olne, Anne Dubois, Roel Slachmuyders, The Flemish Primitives II: The Dirk Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, and Hugo van der Goes Groups, Catalogue of Early Netherlandish Painting in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium Brussels, 1999, pp. 54–104.
[5] See Valentine Henderiks, Albrecht Bouts (1451/55–1549), Contribution à l’Étude des Primitifs Flamands 10, Brussels, 2011.
[6] Ainsworth 2004, pp. 545–55.
[7] Ralph Dekoninck, “An Icon Among the Statues: The Early-Modern Reception in the Southern Low Countries of the Sienese Painting of Notre-Dame de Grâce in Cambrai,” in Bernard Coulie, ed., Paths to Europe: From Byzantium to the Low Countries, Milan, 2017, pp. 51–61.
[8] For which, see Lorne Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, London, 1998, pp. 56–59.
[9] For other variants, see Périer-d’Ieteren 2006, p. 133.
[10] See Périer-d’Ieteren 2006, p. 143, figs. 137–38.

Support: The original support was constructed from a single plank of wood, with the grain oriented vertically. Dendrochronological analysis indicated an earliest possible creation date of 1413 with a more plausible date of 1419 onwards.[1] The wood originated in the Baltic/Polish region. The panel appears to retain its original thickness, measuring 8 mm thick. The presence of a barbe and unpainted wood margins at all edges indicate that the original dimensions are preserved and that the panel was prepared in an engaged frame.

There is a drilled hole at the center of the top edge where the painted composition meets the unpainted margin, which is now filled and retouched. This intervention must have been related to a later display, after the original engaged frame was removed.

Preparation: The panel was prepared with a white ground. There appears to be a thin white priming layer on top of the ground; very broad strokes of a lead-containing paint are faintly apparent in the x-radiograph (see fig. 1 above). Examination with infrared reflectography revealed a minimal underdrawing that was executed using a liquid medium (fig. 2).[2] It appears that all of the important contours of the two figures were underdrawn; however, it is often difficult to distinguish the underdrawing from the paint layers in the reflectogram, as the painted contours generally follow the underdrawn lines closely. The underdrawing is most easily observed in the Virgin’s hands, where the fingers were slightly adjusted in the painting.

Paint Layers: Bouts created this simple yet profound depiction of the Virgin and Child through a very delicate and restrained painting technique. The artist used extremely fine brushstrokes to depict the tiny details of their facial features, hair, and fingernails. He even included a small triangle of brown paint just above the point where the two faces touch, to suggest the Virgin’s hair falling behind them: a tiny detail indicative of the artist’s attention to a realistic portrayal. The fleshtones were painted with a very focused use of lead white for the highlights and subtle warm brown glazes over the white ground to create volume and shading while maintaining luminosity.

Close examination of the depiction of the fleshtones helps in distinguishing the master’s handling from the very close copies made in his workshop. The two very similar paintings, now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, have been attributed to Bouts himself at different times, but the recent study done by Maryan Ainsworth on the occasion of a 1993 exhibition at The Met shed light on the differences between the three paintings and concluded that only The Met’s painting was by Bouts himself. (Ainsworth 1993, p.14). The Met’s version displays the most subtle use of light and shade in the fleshtones of the three, due in part to the selective use of lead white, as is readily apparent when their x-radiographs are compared (see Catalogue Entry).

In contrast to the delicate paint handling evident on the surface, infrared reflectogram reveals the very broad brushstrokes that were used to lay in the solid black background. In the infrared reflectogram captured in 1993, it had appeared that some of these broadly applied strokes in the background, located to the right of the Virgin’s head, represented plants and flowers, an early idea to include a tapestry or brocade background, seemingly akin to that depicted in the workshop copy (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Ainsworth, 1993, pp. 8–9, fig. 6) However, more recent infrared reflectography revealed that these shapes are merely broad brushstrokes, randomly applied in an extremely loose fashion and seemingly part of the artist’s initial laying-in. The broad strokes were so roughly applied that they intersected the reserves left for the figures; see, for example, the broad strokes that dip into the Virgin’s proper left thumb and then intersect the middle of the Child’s back, or slightly overlap the back of his head. These initial broad strokes were then modulated into a solid black in a subsequent layer of black paint.

It appears that Bouts created the rich blue of the Virgin’s robe by layering ultramarine on top of the greenish–blue of azurite, the less expensive pigment. The upper layer of blue has been somewhat abraded during past restoration treatments, but this damage is now reintegrated with retouching. Otherwise, the painting remains in remarkably good condition.

Sophie Scully 2022

[1] Wood identification and dendrochronological analysis completed by Dr. Peter Klein, Universität Hamburg, report dated May 12, 1997. The report can be found in the files of the Department of Paintings Conservation. “The youngest heartwood ring was formed out in the year 1402. Regarding the sapwood statistic of Eastern Europe an earliest felling date can be derived for the year 1411, more plausible is a felling date between 1415..1417….1421 + x. With a minimum of 2 years for seasoning an earliest creation of the painting is possible from 1413 upwards. Under the assumption of a median of 15 sapwood rings and 2 years for seasoning a creation is plausible from 1419 upwards.”
[2] Infrared reflectography was acquired with an OSIRIS InGaAs near-infrared camera fitted with a 6-element, 150 mm focal length f/5.6–f/45 lens; 900–1700 nm spectral response, March 2021.

?Luigi Bonomi, Milan; Signora Cereda-Rovelli, Milan; Bonomi-Cereda, Milan (by 1872–95; sold to Davis in May 1895); Theodore M. Davis, Newport, R.I. (1895–d. 1915; his estate, on loan to The Met, 1915–30)

Milan. Palazzo di Brera. "Esposizione delle opere d'arte antica," August 26–October 7, 1872, no. 70 (as Flemish School, lent by Mme Cereda-Rovelli).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Winter 1903–4, no catalogue? (as by Memling, lent by Theodore M. Davis) [see Chalfin 1903].

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971, no. 206.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Gerard David: Flanders's Last Medieval Master," April 1–May 9, 1972, no catalogue?

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Facsimile in Early Netherlandish Painting: Dieric Bouts's 'Virgin and Child'," April 6, 1993–April 6, 1995, unnumbered cat. (only this painting and the version in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco were in this exhibition).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 22, 1998–February 21, 1999, no. 6.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557)," March 23–July 4, 2004, no. 345.

Brisbane. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," June 12–October 17, 2021, unnumbered cat.

Osaka. Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," November 13, 2021–January 16, 2022.

Tokyo. National Art Center. "European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," February 9–May 30, 2022.

Paul Mantz. "Exposition rétrospective de Milan." Gazette des beaux-arts, 2nd ser., 6 (1872), p. 459, tentatively suggests attribution to Memling.

Robert Stiassny. "Altdeutsche und altniederländer in oberitalienischen Sammlungen." Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 11 (1888), p. 383, as by an artist dependent on Hugo van der Goes.

Ludwig Kämmerer. Memling. Bielefeld, 1899, p. 40, fig. 25, as by an artist in Memling's circle, related in style to van der Goes; calls the Bargello picture a repetition of ours.

P. C[halfin]. "Pictures in the Fourth Gallery." Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 1 (November 1903), p. 30, as by Memling.

E. Gerspach. "La collection Carrand au musée national de Florence." Les arts 3 (1904), pp. 10ff., attributes Bargello example to Van der Goes, formerly attributed to Rogier van der Weyden.

Gaston Migeon. "La collection de M. G. Chalandon." Les arts 4 (June 1905), p. 24, attributes the Bargello and Chalandon examples to Bouts.

Karl Voll. Die altniederländische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Memling. Leipzig, 1906, p. 117, as not by Bouts, but dependent on two other works by him.

Joseph Destrée. Hugo van der Goes. Brussels, 1914, pp. 165–66, ill. opp. p. 92, as close to Van der Goes, but not by him.

Martin Conway. The Van Eycks and Their Followers. London, 1921, pp. 166–67, as superior to the version in the Bargello; close to Bouts, but with resemblances to other artists.

Georges Hulin de Loo. "A Mysterious 'Our Lady' by Dieric Bouts." Burlington Magazine 45 (1924), pp. 59–60, as by Bouts.

Max J. Friedländer. Die altniederländische Malerei. Vol. 3, Dierick Bouts und Joos van Gent. Berlin, 1925, pp. 47, 107, no. 9a, attributes the Bargello version to Bouts, and calls ours a repetition of it.

[Hippolyte] Fierens-Gevaert and Paul Fierens. Histoire de la peinture flamande des origines à la fin du XVe siècle. Vol. 3, La maturité de l'art flamand. Paris, 1929, p. 28, ascribe the Bargello version to Bouts and date it before 1460.

Bryson Burroughs. "The Theodore M. Davis Bequest: The Paintings." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 26, section 2 (March 1931), pp. 15, 19, ill.

J[acques]. Lavalleye in "De vlaamsche schilderkunst tot ongeveer 1480." Geschiedenis van de vlaamsche kunst. Ed. Stan Leurs. Antwerp, 1936, p. 202.

Wolfgang Schöne. Dieric Bouts und seine Schule. Berlin, 1938, pp. 5, 7, 26, 30, 77–78, 133, 139, pl. 7.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, pp. 44–45, ill.

Erwin Panofsky. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, Mass., 1953, vol. 1, pp. 317, 481 n. 6 (to p. 296), p. 492 n. 2 (to p. 317); vol. 2, pl. 268, fig. 425, discusses the emotional relationship of the Madonna and Child; states that our painting and Memling's Madonna in the collection of Lady Ludlow are based on the Straus Houston Madonna by Rogier van der Weyden, which in turn derives from the Cambrai "Nôtre Dame de Grâces"; gives reasons for dating the MMA picture slightly earlier than about 1465.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 12.

Marguerite Northrup, ed. The Christmas Story. New York, 1966, ill. opp. p. 31 (color).

Charles D. Cuttler. Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel. New York, 1968, p. 136, states that the picture is one of several versions of this composition, and that there is a nearly exact replica in the Bargello, dating both of them to the late 1440s.

Max J. Friedländer et al. Early Netherlandish Painting. Vol. 3, Dieric Bouts and Joos van Gent. New York, 1968, pp. 29, 60, no. 9, pl. 17.

Nicole Veronée-Verhaegen. "La Vierge embrassant l'Enfant Jésus par Dieric Bouts." Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts Bulletin 17 (1968), pp. 6, 9, fig. 1, publishes a version in a private collection in Geneva, calling it better than the MMA or Bargello versions, which are probably replicas.

Dirk De Vos. "De Madonna-en-Kindtypologie bij Rogier van der Weyden en enkele minder gekende Flemalleske Voorlopers." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 30 (1971), pp. 137, 146–47, 159, fig. 82, calls it the only known variant of Rogier's lost Madonna with Standing Child.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 192–93, fig. 354.

Elisa Bermejo. La Pintura de los primitivos flamencos en España. Vol. 2, Madrid, 1982, p. 30, describes the version of this subject formerly in the Loygorri collection, Madrid, as the one of the highest quality.

Liana Castelfranchi Vegas. Italia e Fiandra nella pittura del quattrocento. Milan, 1983, p. 257, pl. 152.

H. Mund. "Approche d'une terminologie relative à l'étude de la copie." Annales d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie 5 (1983), pp. 24–25, ill., describes this work and the versions in San Francisco and Florence as replicas, all of which can be attributed to Dieric Bouts.

Larry Silver. The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné. Montclair, N.J., 1984, p. 78, pl. 60, cites it in connection with Massys's lost Madonna of the Cherries as an example of the "local Louvain tradition" of the "motherly gesture of the Madonna".

James Snyder. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. New York, 1985, p. 145, fig. 141, notes that it "displays the sturdier Dutch qualities of [Bouts's] early style"; dates it about 1450.

Guy Bauman. "Early Flemish Portraits, 1425–1525." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 43 (Spring 1986), pp. 6–8, 16, ill. (color), notes its compositional dependence on the icon, Notre-Dame de Grâce, in the cathedral of Cambrai, considered during the fifteenth century to be a portrait of the Virgin made by Saint Luke.

Introduction by James Snyder in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Renaissance in the North. New York, 1987, pp. 10–11, ill.

Martha Wolff. "An Image of Compassion: Dieric Bouts's Sorrowing Madonna." Museum Studies 15, no. 2 (1989), p. 125.

Joel M. Upton. Petrus Christus: His Place in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Painting. University Park, Pa., 1990, pp. 53–54, fig. 51, dates it about 1460.

Hans J. van Miegroet, Selected by Guy C. Bauman, and Walter A. Liedtke in Flemish Paintings in America: A Survey of Early Netherlandish and Flemish Paintings in the Public Collections of North America. Antwerp, 1992, pp. 67–69, no. 13, ill. (color), dates it sometime between 1454 and 1475, observing that it is not clear whether this was an independent work or one wing of a devotional diptych or triptych.

Maryan W. Ainsworth. Facsimile in Early Netherlandish Painting: Dieric Bouts's "Virgin and Child". Exh. cat.New York, 1993, pp. 2, 5–6, 9–12, 14–16 nn. 3, 16, 23–25, 28, fig. 1 and detail on front cover (both in color), fig. 6 (infrared reflectogram), and fig. 9 (x-radiograph), observes that infrared reflectography reveals a schematic underdrawing restricted to the contours of the figures in our painting and the version in San Francisco, and a somewhat more developed sketch in the panel in Florence; comments that this suggests the designs were transferred by tracing or pouncing, and notes that the closeness in size of the MMA and Florence paintings suggests that they came from the same workshop pattern; also notes that the infrared reflectogram of our painting shows "brushwork of plants and flowers to the right and left of the Virgin's head, the beginnings of a tapestry or brocade background abandoned at an early stage"; on the basis of different uses of lead white revealed in x-rays, concludes that three artists were at work: "Dieric Bouts, himself, about 1455-60, on the Metropolitan painting, and two gifted workshop followers, who produced the San Francisco and Bargello copies".

Jochen Sander. Niederländische Gemälde im Städel, 1400–1550. Mainz, 1993, p. 55 n. 35.

Maryan W. Ainsworth. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1994, p. 53, fig. 74.

Hélène Mund in Les primitifs flamands et leur temps. Ed. Brigitte de Patoul and Roger van Schoute. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994, p. 128, discusses the Met, Bargello, and San Francisco paintings as replicas painted by the same artist or under the supervision of his workshop.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 250, ill.

James Snyder in The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 4, New York, 1996, p. 590, refers to it as a replica of the "Virgin and Child" in the Bargello, Florence.

Otto Pächt. Early Netherlandish Painting from Rogier van der Weyden to Gerard David. Ed. Monika Rosenauer. London, 1997, pp. 143–44, ill.

Mary Sprinson de Jesús in From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, pp. 46, 68–69, 85, 103–104, 139, 143, 232, 342, no. 6, ill. (color), dates it about 1455–60.

Maryan W. Ainsworth. Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition. New York, 1998, pp. 272, 274, 311 n. 99, ill.

Martha Wolff in The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 2, Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings. New York, 1998, p. 114 n. 5.

Hélène Mund in Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475): Een Vlaams primitief te Leuven. Ed. Maurits Smeyers. Exh. cat., Sint-Pieterskerk en Predikherenkerk, Leuven. Louvain, 1998, pp. 242–43, 561–62, no. 271, ill. pp. 232 (color), 561.

Maurits Smeyers. Dirk Bouts: Peintre du silence. Tournai, 1998, pp. 112–14, ill. in color (p. 111 and front cover).

Cyriel Stroo et al. The Flemish Primitives: Catalogue of Early Netherlandish Painting in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Vol. 2, The Dirk Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes Groups. Brussels, 1999, pp. 53, 243 n. 30.

Michael Rohlmann. "Flanders and Italy, Flanders and Florence. Early Netherlandish Painting in Italy and its Particular Influence on Florentine Art: An Overview." Italy and the Low Countries—Artistic Relations: The Fifteenth Century. Florence, 1999, p. 56 n. 2, includes it in a list of Flemish works that came from Italy, "of which the precise origins are unknown".

Molly Faries. "Reshaping the Field: The Contribution of Technical Studies." Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth. New York, 2001, p. 92 .

Maryan W. Ainsworth in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557). Ed. Helen C. Evans. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2004, pp. 578–79, no. 345, ill. (color), suggests that this image "may have been more directly inspired by copies derived from the Virgin of Vladimir" (twelth-century icon; State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow) than it is from the Cambrai Madonna.

Catheline Périer-d'Ieteren. Dieric Bouts: The Complete Works. Brussels, 2006, pp. 28, 91, 101, 127, 129–132, 134, 156, 158, 202, 232, 251, 307, 323 n. 10, p. 370, no. 7, ill. p. 251 and figs. 65, 121, 124 (color, overall and detail, and x-radiograph), based on its closeness to the Virgin and Child in the National Gallery, London, considers our panel the prototype for the other closely related examples in the Bargello and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Lisa Monnas. Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550. New Haven, 2008, pp. 143, 355 n. 81.

Barbara G. Lane. Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth-Century Bruges. London, 2009, pp. 75, 287–88 n. 3, fig. 234.

Larry Silver. "Eyckian Icons and Copies." Making Copies in European Art 1400–1600: Shifting Tastes, Modes of Transmission, and Changing Contexts. Ed. Maddalena Bellavitis. Leiden, 2018, p. 133, fig. 3.2 (color).

Old Masters. Christie's, New York. October 15, 2020, p. 142, under no. 47.

Katharine Baetjer in European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exh. cat., Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. South Brisbane, 2021, pp. 84, 230, ill. p. 85 (color).