Madonna col Bambino e san Giovanni Battista

Perugino painted this gentle group around 1497, in a Florence gripped by the friar Savonarola, who was thundering against luxury and vanity and having fine things burned in the city's squares. You can feel that mood of stripped-down piety in the picture's calm and plainness, the quiet faces, the balanced, unhurried arrangement of the Virgin, her child, and the small Saint John pressing his hands together in prayer. The Madonna's serene features are said to be modelled on Perugino's own wife, Chiara. This soft, harmonious manner was hugely admired in its day, and it shaped a young apprentice in Perugino's workshop named Raphael, who would carry that sense of grace far beyond his teacher. The Christ child tilts his head toward his little cousin John.