La Vierge au diadème bleu

This quiet Madonna carries Raphael's name, but by the years it was made his Roman workshop was so busy with papal commissions that his pupils finished much of the work under his eye. The design is Raphael's — the sleeping child on a blue cloth, the young Saint John lifting the veil, Mary in the blue headband that gives the picture its name. The bright, almost porcelain surface is usually credited to his assistant Gian Francesco Penni, one of the hands that kept the workshop running. Mary drawing back the cloth from the sleeping infant was often read at the time as a hint of the shroud to come, the child's death folded quietly into a scene of rest.