The composition of the Russell-Cotes Madonna and Child reveals the work of an artist familiar with late fifteenth-century Venetian developments in the treatment of similar, small devotional panels. The Madonna is shown seated behind a low stone parapet on which the Christ child stands. His body facing left, his head turned right towards the Virgin, creates a bold contraposto pose. Behind the Virgin hangs a curtain of red and gilt damasked cloth, to the left of which an opening onto an extensive landscape view can be seen; such a treatment of background motifs was introduced into North Italian painting by Giovanni Bellini. These bold compositional motifs contrast with the archaising treatment of the Virgin's dark blue mantle which has a gilt embroidered border that falls in a sinuous ornamental line reminiscent of late Byzantine and Gothic strigilation.

The finely treated background landscape reveals an expanse of lawn in which a tall tree flourishes, beyond this the ground falls away to an expanse of water on which sailing boats are visible, extending further into the distance are hills on which buildings and a far-off town can be seen. In contrast to this finely defined landscape, the rather generic, soft, sweetly toned features of the sitters have a characterless quality of intimate pious sentimentality, consonant with the ‘cosmetic softness and blandishments’ of Lorenzo Costa’s late style.