La Madone Bridgewater

A baby twists across his mother's lap, clutching her veil, as both emerge from deep shadow. X-rays show Raphael first painted a landscape behind them, then chose darkness instead.

The story behind the painting

The Bridgewater Madonna is dated 1507 and belongs to Raphael's mature period in Florence. It was painted in oil on wood and later transferred to canvas, and was probably meant as a devotional image for a private room. Preparatory drawings in the Albertina in Vienna and the British Museum in London show Raphael drawing on the Florentine works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. In the seventeenth century the painting was acquired in France for the Seignelay collection and later passed to the Duke of Orleans at the Palais-Royal in Paris. In 1792 it was bought by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater.

What to look for

Against a dark background where a niche with an open door and a bench are barely visible, the Virgin holds her Child in her lap as he moves around toward the left. Their gestures pull in opposite directions and create a serpentine movement: his arms hold her veil, her hands touch his body. The group is remarkably balanced, with an elegant contrapposto twist, and the gaze between mother and child carries the tenderness. Intense, vivid colours give weight to the two figures as they emerge from the shadows.

Meaning and intent

X-ray analysis shows that Raphael first painted a landscape background, as in his earlier Madonnas. He probably decided that a dark ground would let him model the pair more subtly, sharpening the contrast of light and shade and adding a sense of volume and monumentality. The motifs look back to two Florentine masters. In Michelangelo's sculpted Taddei Tondo the Christ Child is stretched across the Madonna's knees, near the infant John holding a fluttering bird, while the serenely smiling Virgin and Child in contrapposto against a dark ground comes from Leonardo.

Legacy

The painting stayed at Bridgewater House, which gave it its name, until 1945. Today it belongs to the collection of the Duke of Sutherland, another branch of the same family, and is on long loan to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Other versions exist: one in the National Gallery in London and an oval one owned by the National Trust at Nostell Priory in Yorkshire. Wikipedia gives its size as 81 by 55 cm, while Wikidata records 81 by 56 cm.