Madonna and Child

In 1730 Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini was elected pope and took the name Clement XII, and this picture was already his. A family inventory of that year lists it. By 1750 it hung in the collection of his nephew, Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, and the inventory written then calls it a Caravaggio. The name held. In the early 1800s Prince Tommaso Corsini still counted it among his Caravaggios.

Over the 20th century scholars moved it to Orazio Gentileschi, one of the first and most gifted painters to take up Caravaggio's manner, and the museum recognises his style in the Virgin's face. Even so, the attribution has been argued over more than once, and the old name has never quite let go of it.

The subject is the Madonna del latte, the Virgin who nurses her child, a type that made Mary's motherhood something you could see. Here everything passes through glances. Mother and son look at each other, and he stretches out a hand to tug at her dress. Take away the halo and the traditional red and blue, and she is dressed in the Roman fashion of around 1610. The boy wears a bright yellow gown.