Madonna del Divino Amore

By 1516 Raphael was the busiest artist in Rome, running a large workshop and juggling the pope's grandest commissions, so a private devotional picture like this was designed by him and finished in good part by his assistants. It groups the Virgin, the infant Christ, the young John the Baptist with his little reed cross, and Saint Elizabeth, with Joseph half lost in shadow behind them. What Raphael brings is the arrangement. Instead of the calm pyramid he had used for years to build these sacred family scenes, he tips the whole group onto a diagonal, so the figures lean and turn into one flowing motion. Christ reaches to bless the little John, Elizabeth steadies the moment. It passed through the Farnese collection over the centuries and came to rest in Naples.