圣母子

In the Venice of the 1490s there was steady demand for small pictures of the Virgin and Child to hang in people's homes for private prayer, and a busy workshop met it by reusing a good design. This tender Madonna is one of at least five known versions Cima da Conegliano made from a single cartoon, a full-size drawing pricked and transferred to begin each panel. The others are scattered now across the Louvre, Los Angeles and North Carolina. Cima came from the little hill town of Conegliano on the Venetian mainland and built his name on calm, clear-lit holy figures set against the countryside he grew up among. This version reached the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg in 1921, after the Russian Revolution swept private collections into state museums.