Madonna Diotallevi

This small Madonna comes from Raphael's earliest years, when he was still working in the orbit of his master Perugino, and for a long time people assumed it was by Perugino himself. The gentle faces and the calm, symmetrical arrangement are exactly what that workshop taught. The Virgin sits with the Christ Child, who reaches toward the infant John the Baptist. Look closely and you can see a younger hand still learning. When a Berlin museum director negotiated to buy it in the 1840s, the painting still carried Perugino's name, and he was careful not to reveal that he thought it was really the young Raphael. Today almost every scholar agrees it is Raphael's, made when he was still in his late teens.