The Virgin of the Grapes

Mignard's paintings of the Virgin and Child sold so well that people made a word for them out of his name, mignardes, and a writer of the time claimed there were few good collections in Italy or France without one.

He painted this one in Rome around 1655 to 1657, near the end of more than 20 years in Italy, and the model behind it is Raphael's gentle, rounded Madonnas. The bunch of grapes the Virgin holds points to the wine of the Mass, and so to Christ's blood and the Passion to come.

Mignard made at least four versions of the picture, one of them for the King of Spain. This one belonged to Louis XIV, who kept it in the private apartment of his rooms at Versailles. It came to the Louvre in 1785 and was on the walls when the museum first opened to the public in 1793.