Ansidei Madonna

The Ansidei Madonna (Italian: Pala Ansidei) is a 1505-1507 painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, painted during his Florentine period. It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary sitting on a wooden throne, with the child Christ on her lap. On her right John the Baptist stands, on her left Saint Nicholas is reading.

At the time the painting was commissioned, there were other paintings that made up the grouping for the altarpiece. Of the predellas, the only that remains is Saint John the Baptist Preaching, the others are inexplicably lost.

Both the main painting, "Ansidei Madonna", and the predella "Saint John the Baptist Preaching", are located at the National Gallery in London.

Read more about Ansidei Madonna:  The Painting, Commission and Provenance

Famous quotes containing the word madonna:

    In our minds lives the madonna image—the all-embracing, all- giving tranquil mother of a Raphael painting, one child at her breast, another at her feet; a woman fulfilled, one who asks nothing more than to nurture and nourish. This creature of fantasy, this myth, is the model—the unattainable ideal against which women measure, not only their performance, but their feelings about being mothers.
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)