Vierge aux candélabres

By about 1513 Raphael was the most famous painter in Rome, so swamped with commissions from popes and princes that he ran a large workshop to keep up. This round Virgin and Child came out of that studio. Raphael designed it and painted the mother and baby, but the two angels holding candlesticks at the sides were finished by his assistants. Those candlesticks are the clue in the title, and they are borrowed from ancient Rome, where such candelabra flanked images of the emperors. Setting them beside Mary and Christ quietly casts the pair as the true king and queen of Heaven. The soft modeling in light and shade gives the faces an almost breathing gentleness. Centuries later it became the first Madonna by Raphael ever to cross the Atlantic into an American collection.