The Virgin with the laughing Child

1460-75 · Statuette · 49 × 27 cm

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Victoria and Albert Museum

Londra, Regno Unito

SalaMedieval & Renaissance, Room 64a, The Robert H. Smith Gallery

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Verificato: 11 giorni fa
Ultimo cambio di stato: 25 set 2026
Fonte: I dati di collezione del museo stesso

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The Virgin and Laughing Child, also called The Virgin with the laughing Child, or generally abbreviated as another of many depictions of the Virgin and Child, is a statuette originating in Florence and was made circa 1460. It is a terracotta figure of the Virgin Mary carrying the laughing child Jesus Christ. It has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci as "the artist's only surviving sculpture". It was credited to the Renaissance artist and inventor by curators at a Florence exhibit in 2019, claiming that this was a student artwork submitted under da Vinci's master and teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio at age 19 or 20. It is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it has been since 1858.

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Con le parole del museo

This sculpture is one of the most famous pieces in the Victoria and Albert Museum - and yet we are not certain who modelled it. The leading fifteenth-century Florentine sculptors Antonio Rossellino, Andrea del Verrocchio and Desiderio da Settignano are amongst those who have been named. The terracotta was for many years attributed to Rossellino, but when the sculpture was lent for the first time to an exhibition in Florence in spring 2019, scholars presented an attribution to the young Leonardo da Vinci, while he was in Verrocchio's workshop (c.1472). This idea was first put forward in 1899, and won favour for several years. The maker intriguingly combines stylistic elements from each of the named sculptors. But the emphasis on the human relationship between mother and child and the naturalistic treatment of the subject are typical of the time.

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The statuette has generally been considered to be a sketch model for a larger marble group. However, it is probably one of the small-scale devotional objects that were so popular in Florentine homes, but now stripped of its naturalistic paint, traces of which appear to remain. Thermoluminenscence testing can provide a guide as to when a terracotta was last fired. Tests undertaken on the sculpture indicate that the earliest date is 1460, although the sculpture is likely to be later in date. Technical and art-historical research is continuing with the view to unravel more of the sculpture's unknown history.

Victoria and Albert Museum