Madonna dell'Impannata

The odd name comes from a small thing in the background: on the right, a window covered not with glass but with an oiled cloth stretched on a frame, an impannata, the cheap way Romans kept the weather out and softened the light. Raphael painted this in Rome around 1513, when he was the most sought-after artist in the city and running a busy workshop to keep up with the popes and bankers queuing for his work. Because of that, scholars still argue over how much of the panel is his own hand and how much his assistants'. It shows the Virgin and Child with the infant John the Baptist and two women saints, arranged in the warm, easy pyramid that Raphael made look effortless. It was probably commissioned by the Florentine banker Bindo Altoviti.