Madonna con san Giuseppe imberbe

When Raphael painted this small Holy Family, he was about 23 and still moving between Florence and the court of Urbino, the town where he had grown up. This is very likely one of the little Madonnas he made for Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, on a short stay there around 1506. It is an intimate object, meant to be looked at up close in a private room, not hung high on an altar. Joseph, unusually, is shown young and beardless, leaning in at the left rather than kept in the background as older painters tended to place him. Notice how gently the three figures are locked together, the Virgin turning the Child toward Joseph so the family reads as one quiet unit. The panel had a long journey afterward. The paint was later transferred off its original wood onto canvas, and the picture passed through Pierre Crozat's famous Paris collection, which Catherine the Great bought almost whole in 1772 to help build the new Hermitage. It has hung in Saint Petersburg ever since.