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 Collections, and a variant in the Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7590, 1861.]

[Footnote 224:  Marble, Berlin Museum.]

[Footnote 225:  Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 7412, 1860; Berlin Museum; collections of Herr von Beckerath and Herr Richard von Kaufmann.]

[Footnote 226:  Louvre, Berlin Museum; Verona, in the Viccolo Fogge; cf. also the relief under the archway in the Via de’ Termini, Siena.]

[Footnote 227:  Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 57, 1867.]

[Footnote 228:  Giovanni Bastianini, 1830-68, though the doyen of forgers, did not profit by his dexterity, and died almost penniless.]