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Provenance and Literature The three Adoration fragments, as some of the few extant drawings by Botticelli, have received a relatively large amount of critical attention over the last hundred years. However, during this time they have been differently attributed and diversely dated. The first known reference goes back to Christian Lewis��� engraving of one fragment in the 1823 version of The Italian School of Design by William Ottley.4 Despite Gere���s statement that ���drawings ha[d] never been more faithfully reproduced���, it seems likely that in this case the abrasion or at least the repair was not fully taken into account. Gere goes on to suggest that the obscurity of the fragments might be due to their ���dubious origin���, meaning that numerous drawings Ottley bought over the course of the nineteenth century had been stolen.5 United and attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi in the collection of Ottley and later Lawrence and Russell, the fragments were dispersed in an auction at Christie���s in December 1884.6 By 1893 Ulmann, referring to the fragment then in the Salting collection (now Pierpont Morgan Gallery), Lawrence, Thomas (1769-1830) English painter and collector, who had the reputation of being the finest portrait painter of his generation in Europe and the last English inheritor of the legacy of van Dyck. In 1820 he became president of the Royal Academy in London. Himself a brilliant draughtsman, he also formed a superb collection of Old Master drawings, probably the most valuable collection ever assembled. 5 HYLAND