The Virgin and Child With St Anne and St John The Baptist

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, sometimes called The Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon.

The drawing depicts the Virgin Mary seated on the knees of her mother St Anne and holding the Child Jesus while St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, stands to the right. It currently hangs in the National Gallery in London. It was either executed in around 1499–1500, when the artist was in Milan, or around 1506–8, when he was shuttling between Florence and Milan; the majority of scholars prefer the latter date, although the National Gallery and others prefer the former.

Read more about The Virgin And Child With St Anne And St John The Baptist:  Subject, History

Famous quotes containing the words virgin, child, john and/or baptist:

    In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

    For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    I do not wish to see John ever again,—I mean him who is dead,—but that other, whom only he would have wished to see, or to be, of whom he was the imperfect representative. For we are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I am perhaps being a bit facetious but if some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpit against the K.K.K. in the ‘20s, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity!
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)