Madonna and Child

This Madonna and Child attributed to Raphael and dated c.1650 raises immediate questions of authorship, since Raphael died in 1520. The entry likely reflects a copy, workshop variant, or a work attributed to Raphael's circle in the seventeenth century when attribution standards were far less rigorous. Raphael's Madonna compositions were among the most copied works in European art throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reproduced by countless followers, pupils, and later artists who sought to participate in his authority. The work's place in a Baroque-era collection would have been as a devotional image drawing on Raphael's unmatched reputation for the sacred subject.

A canonical Raphaelesque Madonna would employ a pyramidal composition, the Virgin's body forming a stable base while she gazes at or gestures toward the child. The colour would be warm and clear, the modelling sfumato-influenced but with the firm solidity characteristic of Raphael's own solutions.