Cutting from a manuscript, probably a choirbook, with the Virgin and Child in a wreath, manuscript on parchment [Italy (perhaps Florence or vicinity), fifteenth century]

Cutting from a manuscript, probably a choirbook, with the Virgin and Child in a wreath, manuscript on parchment [Italy (perhaps Florence or vicinity), fifteenth century]

Circular cutting with the Virgin tenderly holding the Christ Child, both with thin hairline gold haloes and on a pale blue ground, within a wreath bound by 4 gold bands, red ribbons emerging from those bands, diameter 92mm.; set within an early nineteenth-century gilt-copper frame with original glass (now crackled at surface), set in hardwood frame stamped 42 on reverse

This is a charming example of the repurposing of medieval manuscript cuttings into more modern items. This cutting may have been among those discarded by Napoleonic troops when they plundered the large miniatures from manuscript choirbooks, and was perhaps then sold on as part of a larger group of such humbler cuttings, before being refashioned into a devotional image to be hung on a wall.