Ansidei-Madonna

Raphael signed this altarpiece with the date 1505 in gold along the hem of the Virgin's cloak, and he was barely 22 when he did it. He painted it for a family chapel in a church in Perugia, in central Italy, where he was still working in the manner of his teacher Perugino. The Virgin sits enthroned with the Christ child, the young John the Baptist on one side and Saint Nicholas of Bari reading on the other, all held in the calm, airy space Raphael was already making his own. In the 1760s the monks sold the picture to pay for rebuilding the church, and it passed to an English duke at Blenheim Palace. The National Gallery bought it from his family in 1885 for what was then a record sum for any painting.