Botticelli painting saved from leaving UK goes on view in Oxford

The Virgin and Child Enthroned being installed at the Ashmolean Museum

© Andrew Bailey, 2026, courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

A painting by Sandro Botticelli at risk of leaving the UK earlier this year has gone on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford where it was first shown in the 1930s.

The Virgin and Child Enthroned (1470s) was bought by the London-based private collection Klesch Collection, which announced plans in May to loan the painting to the Ashmolean for three years. The painting was previously exhibited at the museum in 1934–35 when it was attributed to Botticelli's workshop.

The UK government placed an export bar on the Botticelli painting, valued at £10.2m, in May 2025. The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport said that the painting had a recommended price of £9,960,000 (plus VAT of £272,000, which can be reclaimed by an eligible institution). The work was sold at Sotheby’s London in late 2024 for £9.7m (with fees).

The painting underwent conservation over the summer to remove discoloured varnish and later retouching, revealing well-preserved details of the Virgin and Child and restoring the original cooler tones, says an Ashmolean statement. The painting is also unusual for its generous use of gold leaf, “although earlier Italian painters regularly applied gold to the backgrounds of their devotional works, it was less widely used by Botticelli's time”, add the statement.

The Botticelli painting was housed in the Convent of San Giuliano in Florence in the early 19th century, and was later transported to a small chapel attached to a group of farmhouses in a nearby village. It then passed into the family of Giovanni Magherini Graziani, who sold it in November 1903 to the Italian dealer, Elia Volpi. Harriet Sarah Jones Loyd (Lady Wantage) bought the work in May 1904 for £5,000. The Botticelli painting had been kept at Betterton House, near Wantage, Berkshire, since 1944.

Founders A. Gary and Dr. Anita Klesch started the Klesch Collection with the acquisition of a set of Four Seasons by Giuseppe Arcimboldo in 2014. The collection of 15th-to-17th-century European art, which also includes works by Caravaggio, Sofonisba Anguissola and Rubens, is regularly loaned to museums and institutions worldwide.