From the 1800s until just a few years ago, parishioners at the church of Saint Félix in the small town of Champigny-en-Beauce in France’s Loire Valley attended services in the presence of a painting they thought was a 19th-century copy of a Botticelli masterpiece. The overlooked work featured a tender scene of the Virgin Mary with the Infant Christ and a young St. John the Baptist, which they believed was painted after the master’s original Virgin Mary, Infant Christ, and St. John the Baptist (c. 1490-1495).
However, recent analysis has revealed it to be a work from the studio of the early Renaissance master, Sandro Botticelli, more commonly referred to as Botticelli (c. 1445-1510).
From October 19, 2024, to January 19, 2025, the public can compare the two paintings in person at the “Botticelli: Two Madonnas at Chambord” exhibition. The newly-authenticated studio version from the French church will be displayed for two to three years in the chapel of the Renaissance-built Chambord Chateau, the largest castle in the Loire Valley, and it will be joined by the original Botticelli, on loan from the Uffizi Gallery for the duration of the exhibit.
Virgin and Child with the Young St John the BaptistSandro Botticelli. C. 1490-1495, oil on canvas, 134 x 92 cm, © SCALA, Florence – Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali e del Turismo.
“We are honored to receive these two pieces,” said Pierre Dubreuil, general director of the Domaine national de Chambord in a statement. Both are a reminder “that the Loire Valley was, and still is, the land of the Renaissance where the influence of Italian artists was fundamental.”
Few had questioned the origins of the Saint Félix painting until 2010, when art historian and co-curator of the forthcoming Chambord exhibition, Matteo Gianeselli, recognized its uncanny similarity to work from the Renaissance master’s studio. Gianeselli, who was at the time researching Italian art in French public collections, shared his intuition with colleagues, and the painting was studied further, before being shown alongside its prototype at the Musée Jacquemart-André from 2021 to 2022, in an exhibit about Botticelli.
It wasn’t until 2023, during restoration, that French researchers using micro-sampling and X-ray analysis determined the painting was created around 1510, shortly after the original. Scientists were able to determine that several artists in Botticelli’s studio contributed to the work, with Botticelli himself possibly adding key details like the Virgin Mary’s face, which is softer and shows greater “precision” than the children’s, according to the analysts. Botticelli died in May of 1510, so his direct contributions remain unknown.
Domaine national de Chambord, Chapel © Sophie Lloyd
Successful paintings were often copied by a master artist’s studio, and it’s not hard to see why this one caught the public’s attention. The tableau depicts a number of delightful, naturalist details, such as how the two children lovingly clasp each other round the neck, or the way baby Jesus’s chubby belly falls forward as his mother tips him over to meet Saint John’s half-smothered face.
Scientists at the state-run, Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) conducted extensive tests comparing the two paintings to another studio version of the same original housed at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, U.K. Like a puzzle coming together at the climax of a mystery novel, all three presented a match.
Key clues came from shared egg tempera and oil paint, as well as the use of two coats of gesso as a base, common in Italy at the time. Two canvas panels were also joined together in the copied, French-housed painting, just like the first version kept in Florence. The palette of the copied painting was also made of pigments typical of Botticelli’s studio, while the presence of zinc and grains of clear glass as paint additives, specific to Italy during the Renaissance, were further evidence.
Domaine national de Chambord © All rights reserved
“The particular treatment of color by superimposing a multitude of fine layers of paint draws close parallels to Botticelli’s artworks and his studio,” adds the C2RMF in their published conclusion, translated here from the French.
X-ray imagery also showed the studio version was not made free-hand, but was copied using a technique called pouncing, where holes trace the outline of another image, and carbon powder was used to transfer it to a new canvas. This explains why the two studio versions are mirror images of the original.
The scientific study confirmed that the Virgin Mary, Infant Christ, and St. John the Baptist from Saint Félix was made using the same model as the Barber Institute version, based on the original Botticelli prototype.
For the exhibit at Chambord, a VR component and educational videos will accompany the paintings, and on November 29, co-curators Gianeselli and Hélène Lebédel-Carbonnel will give a talk to discuss the origins of the newly attributed work. Indeed, mystery still surrounds the painting, whose journey from Italy to France remains all but unknown.