Holy Family with Angels

Francis I came to the French throne in January 1515. By December he had won the battle of Marignano, taken Milan and met Pope Leo X, a Florentine Medici, at Bologna. The Louvre believes this panel was probably painted around 1515 or 1516 and sent to the new king. The Virgin holds the Child, who turns towards his cousin, the infant John the Baptist, held by his mother Elizabeth, old and veiled in white. Two angels lean in from behind, and John's thin reed cross lies on the ground. Andrea painted a second version of the group, with the same two angels, which belongs to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. In 2009, after a long restoration of the Munich panel, the two were shown side by side there for the first time.