Madonna of Foligno

Around 1511 a humanist named Sigismondo de' Conti, secretary to Pope Julius II, believed a falling shell had spared his house in his hometown of Foligno, and he put his thanks into a picture. That is the man kneeling at the lower right, presented to the Virgin by Saint Jerome in his red cardinal's robes. Raphael painted it while he was at work down the corridor on the papal apartments, and you can feel that confidence in the sky, where a golden meteor streaks toward a small town below. The little cherub in the centre holds a blank tablet. It was left empty for an inscription that was never added, so the boy has stood there wordless for more than five hundred years.