Perla di Modena

This head sat in the stores of the Galleria Estense in Modena, in northern Italy, more or less overlooked, until restorers cleaned it and found a quality of paint and underdrawing hard to explain by any lesser hand. In 2012, scholars working around a Prado exhibition on the late Raphael argued that the attribution should return to Raphael himself. The clues were small. An eagle on the frame carried the crest of the d'Este family, who once owned it. A woman's head by Raphael appears in their inventory of 1663, and a faint halo survives behind the hair. The likeliest reading is that this was a first attempt at the Madonna for the large Holy Family now in Madrid, set aside when the wooden panel proved flawed.