La Sacra Famiglia con la palma

Raphael painted this in Florence around 1506, when he was in his early twenties and still learning from the two giants at work in the city, Leonardo and Michelangelo. It is a tondo, a round picture, a shape Florentines liked for paintings meant to hang in a private room at home rather than in a church. He fitted the three figures carefully into the circle, Joseph kneeling to offer flowers to the Christ Child while the palm tree bends overhead. The palm, the flowers and the little well were the sort of details tied to prayers and litanies addressed to the Virgin. Long afterwards the fragile paint was lifted off its wooden panel and onto canvas to preserve it.