Madonna and Child with The Infant Saint John the Baptist

Around 1518 Raphael's workshop in Rome had more work than hands, and his young assistant Giulio Romano was taking on a growing share of the painting. Italy's national heritage catalogue dates this panel to about 1518 or 1519. In 1999 infrared imaging looked beneath the paint and found an earlier idea. The underdrawing shows only the Virgin embracing the Child, close to a sheet by the master now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The small Saint John, holding out a goldfinch, a bird linked to Christ's Passion, seems to have come in a second stage. Whether the design began with Raphael or the pupil invented all of it is still open. A Borghese inventory of 1693 probably lists it as the Child standing on a cushion with Saint John and a little dog, which still sits by the bed behind them.