Mary and Child

Correggio's Mary and Child (c. 1512) belongs to his early mature period, when his synthesis of Leonardo's sfumato, Mantegna's sculptural form, and Venetian colorism was producing works of rapidly increasing sophistication. In the early 1510s Correggio was working through the multiple influences that had shaped his formation — absorbing from each what he needed to construct his personal devotional language — and his Madonna panels from this period show a style still in development but already possessing the warmth and emotional accessibility that would define his mature achievement. The soft modeling and the figures' tender interaction anticipate the full beauty of his work from the 1520s onward.

The gentle sfumato and warm tonality already distinguish Correggio's approach from the harder modeling of his Mantegnesque training, anticipating the tender, luminous quality of his mature work.