Madonna and Child

For about a century this little panel sat in the Borghese collection under someone else's name. The inventory of 1790 calls it a small Madonna by Federico Barocci, the painter from Urbino loved for tender devotional pictures, and the label held until the 1890s. In 1928 the critic Roberto Longhi saw instead a design by Raphael, reworked by the Sienese painter Ventura Salimbeni. Eight years later the restorer Carlo Matteucci cleaned the panel, and the proof appeared on a rock in the lower corner, the name VENTURA SALIMBENI split over two lines. The composition goes back to Raphael, probably through a drawing now in the Louvre. The Virgin nurses the Child and cradles his head in her hand, while he turns his flushed face toward us. Behind them a wide landscape opens onto water and a town with a spire.