For this year's Christmas issue, several friends of The Spectator were asked which picture they’d choose to own. Here is Prue Leith's answer:
Since it’s Christmas, my favourite picture of all time is Botticelli’s Avignon ‘Madonna and Child’ because the Virgin is so exquisite and touching. She can’t be more than 15, and there she is sitting elegantly upright in a heavenly blue robe and fancy headdress, absentmindedly playing with her baby, who, in common with most Renaissance infants, looks like a grumpy grown-up. But he does have the most adorable fat little feet. You long to squeeze his calves and tickle his toes.
The reason I love this picture is because a reproduction of it hung on my bedroom wall when I was a child. My parents had been to Florence just after I was born and, by way of souvenirs, had brought two small-scale Botticelli reproductions, one for me and one for my brother. There was no such thing as tourist tat in the postwar years, but the Florentine skills of painting, woodcarving and framing were alive and well. So instead of a load of Disney junk, we got one serious present. I kept that little reproduction for years, until a burglar mistook it for the real thing and nicked it.