バラの聖母

This is one of the last small Madonnas Raphael made for a private home, around 1517, in the years when he was running the busiest workshop in Rome and could barely keep up with his commissions. That workload shows in the picture itself. The Madonna, the Christ Child and the little Saint John are painted with Raphael's own assured hand, but the figure of Joseph looks different enough that scholars think a member of the workshop, possibly his gifted pupil Giulio Romano, finished him. The rose that gives the painting its name, resting on the ledge below, was added later still by another hand entirely. So the panel is really a record of how a great studio worked, several people building one image around the master's design. The three sacred figures hold together in a tight, gentle pyramid, the shape Raphael returned to again and again.