Vierge à l'Enfant avec saint Jean-Baptiste et Marie Madeleine

This altarpiece began its life around 1511 above an altar in the church of San Domenico in Parma, a calm arrangement of the Virgin enthroned between John the Baptist in his rough robe and the kneeling Magdalene in shimmering silks. It stayed in Parma for three centuries. Then in 1811, with northern Italy under Napoleonic rule, French officials seized it along with countless other church pictures and shipped it to Paris. After Napoleon's fall a great many looted works were sent home. This one was not: it stayed in the Louvre, where it still hangs in the Grande Galerie today. Cima signed it on a little painted slip of paper fixed to the base of the throne, the kind of trompe-l'oeil label Venetian painters liked to leave as their mark.