Garvagh Madonna

In a quiet room with windows onto the Roman countryside, the little John the Baptist hands a carnation to the Christ Child on his mother's lap. Only faint ring haloes tell us this tender family scene is sacred.

The story behind the painting

The Garvagh Madonna, also called the Aldobrandini Madonna, is an oil painting by Raphael from about 1509 to 1510, early in his Roman period. It is one of several small and mid-size Madonnas he painted in Rome, probably in spare moments while he worked for the Pope and his court, at the time he was painting the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Exploratory sketches of this and other Madonnas from 1509 to 1511 appear in his pink sketchbook.

What to look for

The small panel, about 38.7 by 32.7 cm, has a pyramidal composition. The Virgin sits on a bench, her bright face set off by a dark pillar between two windows that open onto a Roman landscape. The Christ Child sits naturally in her lap as the infant John, dressed in a little skin garment, hands him a carnation, a symbol of his future Passion. Observers have noted that the drapery around her lap leaves too little room for her legs. The colours are cool and jewel-like, as if on porcelain.

Meaning and intent

Compared with the Ansidei Madonna of 1505, shaped by the strict Umbrian style, this Virgin is a more human mother whose divinity shows only in her halo, and the two boys are simply children. Raphael seems to have had a special feeling for the bond between Jesus and his cousin John. Michelangelo was a strong influence in Rome, and the format of figures before two windows recalls the Madonna Litta ascribed to Leonardo. Raphael told his students to show things not as they are but as they should be. The critic Ralph Nicholson Wornum wrote that he came nearer to perfection than any other painter.

Legacy

In the sixteenth century the painting belonged to the Aldobrandini family in Rome, and may have come from the collection of Lucrezia d'Este, inventoried in 1592. A 1650 guidebook and later writers record it in Prince Aldobrandini's apartments; a publication of 1823 still placed it there. The National Gallery, in contradiction, says that George Canning, 1st Lord Garvagh, acquired it in 1818 from Alexander Day's collection. After about five decades with Lord and Lady Garvagh it went to the National Gallery in London in 1865, where it remains.