When this painting was given to Boston College in 1963, having been acquired by Boston collectors Quincy Adams Shaw and his wife Pauline in 1872, its attribution was to the Florentine Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto (see image). Since then, Heidi Hornick¹ has argued convincingly that the painting is by a lesser-known, younger artist influenced by Del Sarto, Michele di Jacopo Tosini, and his assistants. Tosini worked closely with his mentor Florentine painter Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561) and, after the latter’s death, inherited the large and productive Ghirlandaio workshop in Florence. Between about 1540 and the early 1560s, Tosini and workshop assistants produced for the private devotion of wealthy Florentine patrons many paintings in the mannerist style featuring the Madonna and Child and St. John the Baptist. Several (see images) share with the McMullen painting elongated figures pushed against the picture plane with the Virgin in a pink dress and purple/blue mantle anchoring a pyramidal composition. Powerful female presences, Tosini’s Marys nonetheless retain their gentle elegance.

Here the Virgin gazes tenderly at the Baptist while maternally embracing her son. Tosini sets the scene against trees in the middle ground and a rocky, river landscape in the distance. Hornick attributes the Virgin to the master, but draws attention to weaknesses in the rendering of Christ and St. John, both of whose faces suffered damage in the past and recently have been conserved.

1. Heidi Hornick, “Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1503–77) and the Reception of Mannerism in Florence” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1990), 280 and Michele Tosini and the Ghirlandaio Workshop in Cinquecento Florence (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2009).