Adoration of the Child

Two of the scrolls the angels carry can still partly be read. The one on the left says Te Deum laudamus. The one in the middle begins Gloria in excelsis, the words sung at the birth of Christ, and is followed by a date, 1519. Even so, some scholars have dated the picture a little earlier or later. The panel is small, under 50 centimetres tall, with an arched top. The Child sleeps on a white cloth. Mary, turbaned and wrapped in a blue cloak, bends over him, while the old, barefoot Joseph leans on his staff. The gallery reads the red, green and white robes of the three angels as Charity, Hope and Faith. In the Borghese inventory of 1833 the picture was listed as a Holy Family by Garofalo, another painter from Ferrara.