STUDIO OF FRANÇOIS LEMOYNE (PARIS 1688-1737)

As Jean-Luc Bordeaux notes, Le Moyne portrays the Virgin with an air of amusement as she is about to `lightly chastise her son' in the prime version of this composition in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersberg (loc. cit.). The scholar further observes that the artist drew inspiration from Bolognese painters along with Correggio and Barrocci, particularly in the soft modelling of the Virgin's face and the soft tonality of the blues and reds, placing the conception and execution of the painting in the mid-1720s.