A partly glazed terracotta group of the Virgin and Child shows the Virgin on a seat, its corners formed from acanthus ending in lion-paw feet, scrolled at the top; this aspect of the design is only developed on the right side of throne, and on the left side it is vestigial. The Virgin, who looks downward, is dressed in a tunic belted at the waist, with a border at the neck and a jewel in center. Over the tunic is a cloak that cascades down over her lap and to the ground. The Christ Child is seated on a cushion; dressed in a simple tunic, he is haloed and looks upward toward his mother, his left hand in his mouth sucking his fingers, and right hand blessing. The tin-glazed parts are principally the cloak, blue on the outside, green on the inside. Also, an unusual thin pinkish porphyry glaze on the ground at front. The remainder of the surface was originally cold-painted but has been stripped, revealing bare terracotta, with splashes of glaze. Traces of pigment on the Virgin’s face, left sleeve, the Christ Child’s robe at the back, and the support of the throne. The back was left bare, neither glazed nor cold-painted.

The group is modeled in the round and is hollow at bottom. On the inside walls, there are numerous firing cracks with glaze run-through from the front. Two regular-shaped round holes are at the back, for ventilation during firing. In 1985 a thermo-luminescence text was carried out on a sample of clay from the inside of the figure, in the area of the Virgin’s lap.¹ This provided a last date of firing for the clay of between 155 and 250 years earlier, i.e. 1735–1830.

Although thermo-luminescence testing has proved extremely helpful as a tool for the dating of objects made from fired clay, it is not an infallible guide. If a sculpture is in some way subsequently exposed to high temperature, for example through some form of adaptation or repair requiring a refiring, this will produce a new “last firing date” for the sculpture. In the case of the Houston Virgin and Child, the test provided a last firing date within a date range in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, which is not easily conceivable for a work of this sort, and well before the nineteenth-century demand for works by the Della Robbia led to their widespread reproduction. Although a few partly glazed nineteenth-century works imitating the style of the Della Robbia are known,² most nineteenth-century pastiches or reproductions after the Della Robbia are fully glazed, and they also predominantly imitate popular well-known models, such as the Brizi Madonna in La Verna and its many repetitions.³

The composition of the Houston Virgin and Child, with a certain dynamism in the slightly unstable pose of the Virgin, is by no means unskilled; indeed, it has a pleasing naturalism and intimacy. For this reason and, perhaps paradoxically, because of the modest quality of its glazing, there would therefore seem, in the case of this sculpture, to be a case for discounting these abnormal thermo-luminescence test results. The sculpture is accordingly here discussed as a genuine work from the early sixteenth century.⁴

It was acquired by Percy Straus with an attribution of the model to the Florentine sculptor Benedetto da Maiano (1442–1497), the enameling by Giovanni Della Robbia (1469–1529/30). This attribution was based on a letter from the former director of the Berlin Museums, Wilhelm von Bode, to the then-owner Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild.⁵ Bode was correct to place the sculpture within the world of Benedetto, whose Virgin and Child groups are characterized by their charm and by the easy intimacy between Mother and Child, for example in the groups within a roundel in the monument to Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and in the Prepositura, Scarperia.⁶ The present model, with echoes not only of the Scarperia group but also Benedetto’s marble statue of the Virgin and Child in the Oratorio of the Arciconfraternita della Misericordia in Florence,⁷ unquestionably reflects the influence of Benedetto da Maiano. However, it has in recent years been associated rather with Benedetto’s close follower and associate Leonardo del Tasso (1472–1501), to whom a second version, in the form of a stucco relief in the Museo Bardini, Florence (fig. 64.1), depicting the Virgin seated upon a cassone, has been attributed.⁸ The short-lived Del Tasso’s work in a variety of media, wood, marble, and terracotta, shows the strong influence of Benedetto da Maiano’s graceful style. Their major documented collaboration was the altarpiece for the high altar of the Church of Santa Chiara in Florence, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, begun by Benedetto da Maiano and completed after his death by Leonardo del Tasso, between 1497 and 1499.⁹ Del Tasso made several sculptures that relate closely to the tin-glazed terracotta sculpture made by the Della Robbia and their rivals the Buglioni: three Pietà groups,¹⁰ all derived from models by Benedetto da Maiano, and two large groups of the Virgin and Child, in white enameled terracotta, deriving from Benedetto’s Misericordia group.¹¹

After Benedetto da Maiano’s death in 1497, Leonardo del Tasso rented one of his former workshops, which contained some works left by Benedetto and recorded in an inventory, among them a “tondo in gesso of a seated Virgin,”¹² which might have formed the basis for the present model. After Leonardo del Tasso’s death, the workshop was taken over by another sculptor, Leonardo da Vinci’s friend and associate Giovanfrancesco Rustici (1474–1554). As Tommaso Mozzati has pointed out, the Bardini model seems to have enjoyed some success in the early years of the century.¹³ In addition to the versions in Florence and in Houston, Rustici also made use of the model for a major work, his marble tondo in the chapel of Villa Salviati in Florence.¹⁴ There is another tondo version in the form of a tin-glazed relief within a wreath surround, in Hearst Castle, San Simeon.¹⁵

Although the design may be attributed to Del Tasso, the sculpture itself is likely to have actually been made not in the Della Robbia workshops, but in those of Benedetto Buglioni who, with his nephew Santi (1494–1576), made tin-glazed terracotta sculpture in rivalry with the Della Robbia. Benedetto worked alongside Leonardo del Tasso on the decoration of the Santa Chiara apse, making the frieze of cherub heads and holy symbols in tin-glazed terracotta that runs along the upper part of the walls.¹⁶ The tin-glazed tondo in San Simeon is attributed to Benedetto’s nephew Santi Buglioni. Benedetto Buglioni’s Virgin and Child groups at their best possess the quality of charming naturalism seen in the Houston Virgin and Child, for example a tondo based on Benedetto da Maiano’s popular Virgin and Child in Scarperia,¹⁷ another tondo of the Virgin and Child with Saints in the Museo della Collegiata in Empoli,¹⁸ or the Virgin and Child with Lilies, –known from versions in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, and elsewhere.¹⁹

—Jeremy Warren