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Madonna and Child (also known as the Stroclet Madonna or Stroganoff Madonna) is a painting by Italian Renaissance artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. Painted in tempera and gold on wood panel around the year 1300, it depicts Mary holding the infant Jesus. It is approximately 8 in wide by 11 in tall.
In Novemeber 2004 painting was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for more than 45 million dollars, the most expensive purchase ever by the museum. It was the first Duccio acquired by the Met, which bought the painting from a private collector in order to close a gap in its permanent collection of Renaissance painting. Works by Duccio, who is considered the pre-eminent painter of Siena in the early Renaissance, are extremely rare, with only a dozen or so known to survive. The painting is one of the few Duccio's known to be created as an individual work of art, and not part of an ensemble.
The painting is sometimes called the "Stroclet Madonna", from Adolphe Stoclet, its second recorded owner, who was a Belgian industrialist in the early 20th century. The Met refers to the painting as the "Stroganoff Madonna" from its first recorded owner, Count Grigorii Stroganoff, a serious collector of early Italian paintings who died in Rome in 1910. Stroclet acquired the painting after Stroganoff's death.
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