Watch List notes:

North Italian, late 15th or early 16th century, The Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels, bronze plaquette, the Virgin seated on parapet, looking down at the Christ Child and flanked by two angels; in the sky above are five cherub's heads resting on clouds; the image set within an elaborately ornamented frame with raised knobs on each corner, 80 x 56.8mm (Molinier 379; Bange 517; Kress 315, fig. 243; Warren, Ashmolean, 380; Warren, Wallace Collection, 52), pierced at top and bottom, fine contemporary cast with brown patina. Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 28-29th November 1980, lot 70; David Abbate (New York City). The unknown author of this plaquette type has been described as a follower of Moderno or the Master of the Corn-Ear Clouds. The thick foliate border with a central scene in miniature imitates the bordered miniatures found in illuminated manuscripts. Warren, in describing the specimens in the Ashmolean Museum and the Wallace Collection, has suggested that they were produced as covers for small prayer books. This plaquette is the counterpart to another of The Dead Christ with the Virgin and St. John which also incorporates the same thick foliate border and the raised knobs in the corners. If indeed they were intended as book covers, it is likely that they have a Venetian source, given the abundance of binding and printing in that city in the 16th century.
(600-800 GBP)