Filippino Lippi Depicts a Child Crumpling the Pages of a Book

The panel painting in tempera, oil and gold by the Florentine painter Filippino Lippi of the Madonna and Child preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is of interest for book history in its depiction of the infant Christ crumpling the pages of a book. Considering the whiteness of the paper, and the clarity of text depicted in the painting, it is possible that this is meant to represent a printed book, though it also could be a manuscript.  Whether the book was manuscript or printed, the image is an early depiction of the playful approaches to books taken by infants.