The Virgin of the Chair

Guido Reni's Virgin of the Chair, painted around 1624, shows the Bolognese master working within a long tradition of circular or tondo Madonna compositions ultimately deriving from Raphael's famous Della Sedia tondo. Reni was the most admired Italian painter of his generation among seventeenth-century collectors and critics, and his serene, idealised Madonnas were among his most sought-after works. This painting demonstrates his characteristic synthesis of classical restraint and Baroque spiritual warmth.

The tondo format concentrates attention on the Virgin and Child in intimate close-up. Reni's characteristic silvery palette — developed fully by the 1620s — gives the flesh tones a luminous purity. The soft, idealised features of the Virgin are typical of his deliberate rejection of Caravaggesque realism in favour of an elevated classicism.