Die Madonna von Bogotá

This Madonna and Child has one of the stranger stories attached to any picture given to Raphael. It surfaced in Bogota, Colombia, in 1938, and the tradition says it travelled there centuries earlier with Gonzalo Suarez Rendon, a Spanish conquistador who is said to have received it as a spoil of war after the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Brought to New York in 1939, it was examined by museum experts, and some pronounced it an authentic Raphael from around 1517. Others were unconvinced, pointing to a very similar Madonna in the Prado and treating the Bogota panel as a version rather than the master's own hand. That disagreement has never fully settled. The painting has stayed in private hands in Colombia, far from the galleries where Raphael's accepted works hang.