Madonna and Child with St Anthony of Padua

Napoleon's museum director, Vivant Denon, walked through the Brera in 1812 and listed the Lombard and Venetian pictures he wanted for Paris. What he proposed was a trade. The academy's own commission of painters wrote against the deal that February and was overruled by the viceroy of Italy, Napoleon's stepson Eugene de Beauharnais. Five Milanese canvases went to France, and in 1813 five northern ones came back in their place: this painting, a second van Dyck, a Rubens, a Jordaens and a work listed as a Rembrandt. Saint Anthony of Padua kneels here beside the Virgin and Child. The museum dates the canvas to about 1630 to 1632 and reads the pose and features of the Virgin as Venetian, carried back from the years van Dyck spent working in Italy.