The artwork is accompanied by a card by Sandro Bellesi.

In a good state of conservation, the artwork, originally placed in a rounded frame in the central part, presents, within an indefinite space and seemingly lacking in depth, the figure of the Virgin Mary sitting in the act of supporting on her own legs the Child Jesus, in an upright pose. Halo around by an intense divine brightness, the little child of God, the source of light itself, is described as an infant with a white complexion and a thick blonde hair slightly curled with a blessing hand turned towards one or more ideal bystanders. Full of tenderness and maternal love appears the figure of the Madonna, with perfect features and smooth skin evoking the shiny pink chalcedony of Volterra, which, placed three- quarters, is totally attracted by the contemplation of the little son. The high quality found in the execution of the figures is masterfully emphasized also in the rendering of the fabrics, orchestrated mainly on precious effects rich in enamel, alternating, mostly, blue lapis lazuli to pearly white and red coral to olive green. The style characters and the close affinities with some works by Carlo Dolci, representing the same composition, allow you to refer the painting to the catalogue of this artist. Born in Florence in 1616 and son of the tailor Andra Dolci, Carlo, according to the historical memories handed down by his friend and biographer Filippo Baldinucci ( news of the teachers of the drawing by Cimabue, Florence, 1681-1728), was initiated to study painting around nine years in the school of Jacopo Vignali, an important Tuscan painter from the atelier of Matteo Rosselli. The close dependence on this master's style combined with the knowledge and study of the works of other local painters of the turn of the century, first among all those of Cristofano Allori, characterize, at the turn of the twenties, the artist's first well-known works today, marked by a very refined stylistic language marked largely by an acute realism, clearly visible in the supervised rendering of the characters and in the almost maniacal care of details, carried out with a rigour that we could call hyper-realistic. The success achivied with the first works favored the artist, starting from the early thirties, coveted commissions, mainly linked to the Florentin patrician and in particular to Casa Medici, for whose members Carlo worked at full speed until the moment of his death. On the trace of biographical sources, archive documents and inscriptions present in many paintings it is possible to follow punctually the activity of our, characterized, semore, "frm imagesof virginal and timeless beauty, displayed by the very smooth and almost porcelain rendering of the incarnates on which a pale astral light is shattered, and an aura of sacredness that is also veiled in profane representations, mostly portraits and allegories". The strong link with Christian doctrines, which remained constantly as a key element for the reading of his works and life choices of the artist, led Carlo to abhor the depiction of sensual or malicious paintings, very much in vogue in the Florentine art of the time linked essentially to the teachings of Francesco Furini and his followers, and to dedicate almost all his paintings to sacred subjects, mostly Madonna and Child, Gospel episodes and images of saints. The pure and profound interpretetion of the sacred verb, key element for the iconographic and philosophical reading of the painter's works, favored the close link he established with the Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici and the mother of these Vittoria della Rovere. The only journey made by the artist beyond the Tuscan borders dates back to 1672. On the occasion of the upcoming wedding of Archduchess Claudia Felicita of Austria with the Emperor Leopoldo of Hasburg, Dolci stayed, in that year, some months at the court of Innsbruck, where he made, among other works, two portrait of the future bride. On his return to his country he was attacked for some years by a deep depressive crisis, which led him almost to abandon his profession. Thanks to the closeness of his family and his closest friends, after 1675, the artist resumed his activity at full speed, which ended with his dead in 1687.
The artwork is an autograph replica of well-known compositions by Carlo Dolci, whose prototype is traditionally recognized by contemporary critics in the Madonna with child, otherwise known as Madonna delle pietre due to the presence of a sumptuous baroque frame in gilded metal and semi-precious stones, preserved in the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, coming from the Medici collections. Erroneously dated by Francesca Baldassari in the 1930s and the reported by Riccardo Spinelli in the following decade, the work was the object of constant reflections by the artist as they indicate, in addition to the work under consideration, some replicas, sometimes almost identical and others with slight variations, among which they deserve to be remembered, for greater lexical relevance and for better quality, a version at the Borghese Gallery in Rome and one in the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Viennna. The lack of historical memories related to the ab antiquo origin of the work does not exclude that it can be identified with one of the paintings with Madonna with child reported in the biographical documents and in the archival reports to the name of Carlo Dolci, among which appeared, precisely, a "beautiful Virgin with child, which with special care is preserved (go) in the chapel of the novitiate of the Fathers of St. Mark: work of alienated from the Florentine convent in the unknown era, whose historical memory was found by the writer only in recent times.
Although slightly weaker in the passage of the brushstrokes on the crimson cloth of the Virgin's dress than the beautiful and cited prototype of the Palatine Gallery, the work, probably related to a later moment scalable to the sixties or seventies, reveals in any case the full autography of Dolci, as evidenced by the comparison with some derivations of workshop among which stands out a canvas in private collection assigned to seafaring honors: work, the latter, dignified but, to all intents and purposes, decidedly mediocre compared to the specimen under examination.