Мадонна в кресле

Raphael painted this in Rome about 1513, in the same years the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel had just been unveiled and the city was the artistic center of the world. He worked it onto a round panel, a tondo, and fitted the three figures into that circle so tightly they seem to press against its edge. Mary holds the Christ child close, cheek almost against his, while the young John the Baptist leans in from the side. She wears the striped shawl and headscarf of an ordinary Roman woman rather than a queen of heaven, which is part of why people have always found the picture so warm and human. It stayed with the Medici family and later hung in the private rooms of a Florentine prince. During the wars around 1800 Napoleon's forces carried it off to Paris, where it sat for about 15 years before returning to Florence. It has hung in this palace gallery, in a room named for Saturn, since 1882, still in the heavy gilded frame that echoes its curve.