Copy after Giulio Romano
The story
Copy after is the most modest label in a museum catalogue. It says the composition belongs to a known master, and the painting itself is by someone else repeating it. Here the master is Giulio Romano, Raphael's leading pupil and later court artist to the Gonzaga in Mantua.
The canvas shows the Child lying on a small bed while Mary lifts a fine veil over him, with Joseph and the young John the Baptist beside her. Paola Della Pergola, who catalogued the Borghese paintings, identified it as a variant of Raphael's Madonna of the Veil, probably taken from a lost version by Giulio. It dates to the mid-16th century. Since 1916 it has been on deposit in the church of Santo Spirito in Urbino, so it cannot be seen at the Galleria Borghese.
