The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Madonna Stroganoff)

Around 1541 Bronzino was the portrait painter of the Medici court in Florence, working for Duke Cosimo the First, and that training in enamel-smooth surfaces is all over this Holy Family. The Virgin's twisting pose is lifted almost directly from Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, then in Florence, a work every ambitious painter in the city measured himself against. Bronzino signed it on the stone at the right, "Bronzino of Florence". The name that stuck to the painting comes from elsewhere. In the early 19th century it entered the great St Petersburg collection of Count Stroganov, which is why it is still called the Madonna Stroganoff. It reached the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1932. Infrared study later showed how much he changed as he worked, reworking the children's hands and the Virgin's foot before settling the design.