A young boy,
oil on panel, 49 x 36 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Spengler collection, Osnabrück, 1926;
Private Collection, Hanover
Private European collection

This painting, of unusual subject, shows the figure of a smiling putto with a game or a puzzle in his hands which appears to be a version of the so-called ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ or ‘Tric-Trac’ (see V. Huber, The Yawning Mouth in ‘Gibecière’, I, n.1 (Winter 2005), pp. 11ss; D. Singmaster, Some Early Topological Puzzles in ‘Recreational Mathematics Magazine’, 3, March 2015, pp. 22-27 ). The image may hide an allegorical meaning emphasised by the child’s mocking smile.

The composition relates to a work by Bernardino Luini (43.2 x 34.3 cm) conserved in Elton Hall, near Peterborough G (see B.Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford 1932, p. 318). Luini’s painting was once in the collection of William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey where it was compared to another work given to Leonardo da Vinci in the celebrated collection of Lord Arundel, now lost.
The affinity with Luini’s derives most probably from a common prototype, as the style of the present painting resembles the work of Leonardo da Vinci’s first Lombard followers, such as Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino dei Conti. In particular to the small group of works gathered under the name of the so-called ‘Master of Madonna Linsky’ or ‘Pseudo Francesco Napolitano’, including the Madonna del Latte from the Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (No. 1982.60.7) and the Madonna and Child in a Landscape in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan (see K. Chiristiansen, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1984, pp. 35-36).