Madonna d'Orléans

Around 1506, in his Florentine years, Raphael was in his early twenties and taking in everything the city could teach him. Leonardo and Michelangelo were both there, and their sense of weight and tenderness in the body was in the air. This small panel shows it settling into Raphael's hands. Mary holds the Christ child on her knee in a plain room, and past them in the shadows you can pick out pots on a shelf, a quiet borrowing from Flemish painting the Italians admired. The child twists to look out with a seriousness that feels older than his body. The picture takes its name from the House of Orleans, whose collection it later joined, and it hangs today among the Raphaels the Duke of Aumale gathered at Chantilly.