The Madonna and Child with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist

In 1805 this panel left the Villa Aldobrandini in Rome. After the French invasions of Italy, Roman families were selling pictures, and British dealers were buying. It was acquired for the Scottish dealer William Buchanan, and the Reverend William Holwell Carr, who had taken a sixth share in the shipment, chose it for himself when it reached England. At his death he left it to the National Gallery, then only seven years old. Mary sits with her cousin Elizabeth and their two sons, and the infant Christ throws his head back with a laugh. It is a smaller version of the Tallard Madonna in the Hermitage, without the Saint Catherine who appears there. The London panel shows many changes of mind, and some of them move it closer to the Saint Petersburg picture, which suggests this one may have come first.