小考珀圣母

Raphael painted this small Madonna around 1505, at the moment he was leaving the court town of Urbino, where he grew up, and moving toward Florence, where Leonardo and Michelangelo were then remaking painting. It stands near the start of the long series of Madonnas that would make his name. Mary holds the child against an open Italian countryside, with a little domed church set on the hill behind her, and everything is turned to a gentle, balanced calm. The name comes from a later owner, the English Earl Cowper, who kept it in the 18th century. In 1914 it was sold to the American magnate Peter Widener, and his son gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1942.