Madonna and Child with two Saints

Copy of a niello print from the Durazzo Collection.

According to Dutuit , the facsimile recorded by Bartsch , Duchesne , and Zanetti does not correspond with any of the paper impressions in the Durazzo sale of 1872. Dutuit speculated that they had seen a facsimile copied from a silver plaque described by Passavant ( vol . 1 , p . 272 , no . 10 ; also Dutuit , p . 46 , no . 187 ) . This oval medallion , measuring 52 x 39 mm , was no . 2827 in the Durazzo sale catalogue . Supposedly , the subject was the Madonna and Child enthroned and flanked by a bishop saint ( with a cross ? ) and another saint ( a cardinal or a monk carrying a book ? ) . Repository unknown . 

The nielli of the Durazzo collection were reproduced in engravings by the owner himself, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, in Venice - as also specified by Malaspina in his catalog of 1824 - constituting a series that was circulated and collected by amateurs. Bartsch describes these copies in his volume published in 1811, a date that therefore constitutes the terminus ante quem for the execution.