Virgen con el Niño y dos ángeles músicos

This is the smallest painting Antonio da Correggio is known to have made, and one of his earliest, from around 1515 when he was still in his mid-20s and largely unknown. He would later become famous for vast, dizzying ceilings in Parma, crowds of figures seen from below and floating up into open sky. Here he is working at the opposite scale, a little panel you could hold in two hands. The Virgin bends over the child while two angels make music beside them. Scholars think it may have been made for the court at Mantua nearby, where the ruling family kept one of the most musical households in Italy, full of singers and instrument-makers, and that court is the likeliest audience the two music-making angels were painted for.