Aldobrandini Madonna - Provenance

Provenance refers to the history of ownership of a work of art. Tracing the provenance tells who owned the painting and can lead to the painting's artist. Raphael’s Aldobrandini Madonna, now of the London National Gallery.

In the 16th century the painting was owned by the Aldobrandini family who owned apartments in the Villa Borghese in Rome. Raphael painted a number of Madonnas that passed into the Aldobrandini family; Virgin and Child with Saint John may have been in the collection of Lucrezia d’Este (d. 1598), inventoried in 1592, that came to the Aldobrandinis. The National Gallery’s painting is most likely identical to the painting in Jacomo Manilli's Villa Borghese guidebook in 1650 titled ‘Vergine, con Christo, e San Giouannino, ... di Raffaelle’ (‘Virgin with Christ, and Saint John, … by Raphael’). In the 1780s art critic Basilius von Ramdohr noted that the painting was still kept in Prince Aldobrandini's apartments, verified by the National Gallery to Seroux d’Agincourt’s illustrated publication of 1823, which includes a sketch of the painting and states that the painting can be seen at Prince Aldobrandini's apartment, and is notated in the margin:

"A most precious small painting of his middle period. The composition is very good. The Christ is beautiful, and the Saint John true, only the head of the Madonna compared with the others, is less beautiful. The disegno is most delicate. One notices from the colouring that the master had painted a lot al fresco at that time. The inks are not very much rubbed."

Per the National Gallery, and in contradiction to the Agincourt publication, the painting was acquired by George Canning, 1st Lord Garvagh in 1818 from Alexander Day's collection before it was sold in 1865 to the National Gallery by his widow and heirs for ₤9,000.