124 FRANCESCO GRANACCI (Villamagna 1469-1543 Florence) The Virgin and Child Devotional panel. Oil on softwood panel, modern frame. (Wear and restoration, mainly on the body of the Child and the left hand of the Virgin) 48,3 x 31,5 cm. On the reverse side traces of protective gesso and four small gesso reinforcements on the left and one on the right Inscriptions in black paint at the top "F (rate) Bar(tolomeo)" in the center "Frate" at the bottom "Raffaellino the bottom "Raffaellino". Presence of two stamps of red wax, one carrying a coat of arms, is undoubtedly a seal of collection; the other carrying inscriptions little legible is a seal of administration. On the neutral background of the painting, the seated Virgin, seen at mid-body, wearing a raspberry pink dress and a green mantle and a green mantle around her waist, holds the naked Child in her arms. A light white veil covers, partly, her blond hair framing her face. She seems to want to attract the Child to her breast, by looking at it with tenderness. This one, turns away from it in favour of the spectator, but remains connected to his Mother by clinging to her cleavage. The light coming from the left illuminates this group of its soft luminosity. This work, unpublished until now, is to be placed in the pictorial atmosphere that followed the activity of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) in Florence and, according to Vasari, around the artists of the Medici school of the school of the Garden of San Marco at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is to one of these painters, Francesco Granacci, to whom we must attribute this devotional painting. His apprenticeship took place in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandajo where he met Michelangelo (1475-1564) who became his friend and whom he followed to Rome in 1508 to the Sistine Chapel. He was also in contact with Fra Bartolomeo (1475-1517). He thus belongs to the early Florentine painting of the 16th century and his style oscillates between the "classical" modes with large and balanced forms and those His style oscillates between the "classical" modes with large balanced forms and the more fanciful and stretched "mannerist" ones, described by a delicate and vibrant chromatic palette. One finds here this taste in the choice and the presentation of the subject and in the extent of the forms enveloped draperies. The personality of the artist is manifested in the weighted attitude of the characters, in the elongation of the faces whose pointed noses and small mouths prolong high foreheads mouths prolong high bulging foreheads. His child Christ, with his often saddened look, premonitory of the Passion, are represented plump, chubby, most often naked. This work can be compared with several other panels by Granacci, including the Virgin and Child between the Child between Saint Sebastian and Saint Francis in Castelfiorentino, Museo Santa Verdiana around 1500-1523 , (cf. Arte in Valdelsa, Certaldo exhibition, Palazzo Pretorio, July October 1963, No. 66 pl. LXIII) including the Saint Magdalene, (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 1068) or the scene of Saint Apolline before her judges (New York, private collection, Fondazione Zeri, fototeca no. 38001), both of which were painted around 1515-1535. These comparisons make it possible to to place the execution of our painting in the decade 1515-1525.