6] The Virgin, with
long wavy hair, looks downwards towards her Child, who is looking
outwards to the spectator. This is a work of merit, with something
attractive in the anxious and clinging attitude of the Madonna. The
large clay Madonna and Child in London,[227] the Christ sitting in a
chair and the Virgin with hands joined in worship, has been the
subject of much controversy. There are good grounds for doubting its
authenticity. The angular treatment of the head and a dainty roundness
of the wrist often indicate that Bastianini had a share in this class
of work.[228] This relief has all the merits and demerits of the
circular Piot Madonna in the Louvre.[229] Here, too, the handling of
Bastianini has been detected, though there is a clumsiness which is
seldom seen in the productions of that distinguished artist. The frame
and the background, which are integral features of the composition,
can leave no doubt as to the origin of this work. But the Piot relief
has an interest which the London terra-cotta cannot boast, for a
fifteenth-century original from which the copyist worked is in
existence, now belonging to Signor Bardini. This is a tondo Madonna of
uncoloured stucco, of no particular value in itself; but it is the
model from which the Piot sophistication was contrived; or else it is
a cast from the lost original of marble. It reveals all the whims of
the copyist: the treatment of the hands, the lissome tissue of the
drapery, and the angular structure of the skull. A less interesting
forgery is the marble Madonna in London.[230] Three reproductions of
the lost Donatellesque original exist, the Berlin copy[231] being in
stucco, that at Bergamo terra-cotta. Signor Bardini has an effaced and
poor copy of the same relief, in which the hand of the Madonna is
obviously meant to be holding something; but the stucco has been much
rubbed away and one cannot tell the original intention of the
sculptor. But the two other genuine versions are in better condition
and supply the answer, showing that the Virgin held a large rose
between her fingers. The man who made the London relief copied from
the incomplete version, and carved an empty meaningless hand with the
fingers grasping something which does not exist.

[Footnote 221: v. 100.]

[Footnote 222: Mentioned in his will. He died in 1500. Milanesi, iii.
p. 8.]

[Footnote 223: Marble, No. 39. Versions in soft materials exist in the
Louvre, in the Andre and Bardini Collecti