Madonna and Child (855.3.9)

Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo painted this Madonna and Child around 1515 as a private devotional panel for a Ferrarese client. After training under Benvenuto di Giovanni in Siena and subsequently visiting Rome where he encountered Raphael's work firsthand, Garofalo became Ferrara's primary conduit for the new Roman High Renaissance style. His Madonnas combine Raphaelesque clarity of form and expression with the warm Ferrarese palette inherited from Dosso Dossi and the Este court tradition. Small devotional panels like this circulated widely among Ferrara's prosperous merchant and noble families, and Garofalo's productive workshop supplied a continuous demand for intimate religious images in the Raphaelesque manner.

The panel shows Garofalo's early style with the warm Ferrarese palette and refined modeling that would become his signature, already showing the Raphaelesque influence from his Roman studies.