La Sagrada Familia de Francisco I

In the spring of 1518 Raphael, then the most sought-after painter in Rome, shipped this large panel north to France. It was commissioned by Pope Leo X as a diplomatic gift for Claude, the queen of Francis I, which is how it got its name. The scene is crowded and tender: the Christ child stepping from a cradle toward his mother, Saint Elizabeth, the infant John the Baptist, Joseph behind, and two angels scattering flowers from above. By this point Raphael was running a huge workshop and could not paint everything himself, and this is one of the works where the assistants show. His chief pupil Giulio Romano did much of the execution, and contemporaries noticed. The colours came out darker and smokier than Raphael's own, and the painter Sebastiano del Piombo wrote to Michelangelo that summer to mock the picture's murky tinge. Raphael would be dead within two years, at 37, and pieces like this are partly why we still argue about where his hand ends and his workshop begins.