La Vierge à l'Enfant avec un ange (Madonna del Latte)

Correggio painted this small Virgin and Child in the early 1520s in Parma, where he was covering church domes with soft, dissolving light. Here the mood is domestic. Mary bares her breast to nurse the naked Child, but he turns away, reaching instead for fruit an angel holds out to him, pears in most readings. That small gesture made the picture famous. Copies and engravings carried it across Europe, and in 1787 Goethe saw a version at a dealer in Naples and was moved by the baby caught between his mother's milk and the offered pears. The Budapest panel later belonged to the Esterhazy princes, whose collection became the core of the city's museum of fine arts.