La Madone d'Albe

Raphael painted this around 1510, a circular picture, a tondo, of Mary seated on the ground with the infant Christ and the young John the Baptist. Sitting her on the bare earth rather than a throne was deliberate. It is the Madonna of Humility, and Raphael fits all three figures into the circle so naturally that they seem to fill it without strain. The travels of this small panel say a lot about the last few centuries. After long being in Italy, it belonged to the Dukes of Alba in Spain, which is where its name comes from. In 1836 it was sold to Tsar Nicholas I and became a prize of the imperial Hermitage in St Petersburg. Then in 1931 the Soviet government quietly sold it, along with other Hermitage masterpieces, to the American collector Andrew Mellon, who needed the hard currency. Since 1937 it has been at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.