The Virgin and Child

The Child will not keep still. He stands on his mother's lap and leans away from her, pulling against the hand that holds his arm, and in his other fist he grips a small bird, a linnet. The National Gallery suggests it may hint at the Passion, the suffering to come, though painters more often used a goldfinch for that. The Virgin sits on a marble bench, a heavy, solid figure against bright open country, where a river winds between hills dotted with houses and churches and a ruined temple stands on a far ridge. Cima painted this around 1505, in egg tempera with a little oil, and he put his name on the stone ledge that runs along the front. The Gallery bought it in 1860 from the Paris collection of Edmond Beaucousin.