The art of the Umbrian artist, Piero dei Franceschi (1415?-1492), who is so well represented in the National Gallery, is not seen at the Louvre, where, however, a _Madonna and Child_ passes under his name. This panel (the official number of which is given in the Catalogue as 1300B and on the frame as 1300A) was formerly in the Duchâtel collection before passing into that of the Duc de la Trémoïlle, from whom it was purchased in 1898 for £5200 by the _Société des Amis du Louvre_. It was recognised over twelve years ago by M. Ary Renan as the work of Alessio Baldovinetti (14271499), who, like Piero dei Franceschi, was formed on Domenico Veneziano, and was also influenced by the discoveries and methods of Uccello. Crowe and Cavalcaselle also had made that attribution before the question was taken up by Mr. Berenson, who on morphological and æsthetic grounds unhesitatingly ascribes it to Baldovinetti. “Compared with Baldovinetti,” writes Mr. Berenson, “Piero dei Franceschi is sterner and harder and more monumental. Piero’s Madonnas have a fixed and severe physiognomy, massive structure and immobile pose; never a smile, never a touch of tenderness.” How different from all this is the _Madonna_ by Baldovinetti before us, with her “refined features and her pensive gaze of adoration—a look that unveils her inner life, a look that will soon develop into the mystery which we feel in the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.” Vasari tells us that Baldovinetti was “extremely careful and exact in his work, and of all the minutiæ which Mother Nature is capable of presenting, he took pains to be the close imitator. He delighted in the representation of landscape, which he depicted with the utmost exactitude; thus we find in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, herbs, fruits, paths, fields, cities, castles, sands, and objects innumerable of the same kind.” A goodly number of these are included in the background of this picture. With Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) and his brother Piero (1443-1496) we enter on a more scientific era in Florentine art. Masaccio had already advanced the study of the nude, and the influence of Donatello (1386-1466) and other sculptors had drawn the attention of all art-workers to the fuller significance of the human form. A more serious attempt was now made by the rising generation of sculptors and painters, among whom Antonio Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio (1435-1488) now played the leading parts, to impart to the human figure a more exact physiological accuracy and so give it greater effectiveness. The advance made by Baldovinetti in landscape tended also to a more real sense of movement in a natural environment. The Louvre catalogues no picture under the name of either of the Pollaiuoli, but a _Madonna_ (No. 1367A) here credited to Bastiano Mainardi was probably executed by Piero, who frequently worked on his elder brother’s designs.