Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist

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Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist: Raphael

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Raphael Oil Painting - Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist

Keywords: Madonna, Child, Saint, John, Baptist

Work Overview: Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist (The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist)
Artist Raphael
Year 1507
Medium Oil on panel
Dimensions 122 cm × 80 cm (48 in × 31 1⁄2 in)
Location Musée du Louvre, Paris

La belle jardinière, also known as Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. [1] It was commissioned by the Sienese patrician Fabrizio Sergardi and shows Mary, Christ and the young John the Baptist. It is currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. This painting is one of the most famous Madonna portraits of Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael. Raphael studied the works of Leonardo da Vinci while in Florence and applied some of Leonardo's techniques to his own painting. Raphael's use of contrasting light and darks, and the relaxed, informal pose of the Madonna illustrates Leonardo's influence on La belle jardinière.

The so-called La Belle Jardiničre, now in the Louvre, is one of the several Madonna paintings executed by Raphael during his stay in Florence (1504-1508). It follows the Madonna of the Goldfinch (Uffizi, Florence) chronologically. Its composition is a mirror image of that of the Madonna of the Meadow (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The painting was commissioned by Fabrizio Sergardi, a Sienese nobleman, and was left uncompleted by the artist. Nevertheless, it is signed and dated. According to tradition it was finished by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, although the recent restoration would seem to contradict this attribution. It was subsequently acquired by Francis I of France. The painting is known primarily for the harmonic and proportional balancing of the poses of the figures and for the high formal quality present in every element, particularly in the face of the Virgin, which served as a model of beauty for generations of artists.

This painting is the highpoint of all Raphael's Florentine Madonnas. The bodies occupy the space with great freedom, while the figures interact with deep feeling. The arch formed by the frame completes the composition harmoniously. Raphael put the date of the picture into the hem of the Virgin's mantle, as he often did, but it is not clear if the Roman numerals are meant to be read as 1507 or 1508.

The Louvre Museum in Paris France houses one of the several paintings of Madonna by Raphael which he finished during his stay in Florence between the years 1506 and 1508. It is the La belle jardinière, or widely known as Madonna with Saint John the Baptist. The image has a great resemblance with that of the Madonna of the Meadow which is now located at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It became one of Raphael’s famous paintings because of the harmony and balance of the picture together with the high quality of elements present. The high standards of the elements used are evident on the face of the Virgin which has become a symbol of beauty for other artists.

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A Zurich-based lawyer has claimed that a painting in his collection, Madonna Leo X, is an original by Renaissance master Raphael, according to German daily Die Welt. The lawyer, Hanspeter Sigg, suggests that a similar picture, La belle Jardinière, which hangs in the Louvre is, in fact, a replica of his painting.

Sigg is said to have put his painting through a series of tests, the last of which allegedly confirmed that the painting was created in the 16th century. However, according to the paper, Sigg has not taken the picture to any laboratory that would be able to definitively determine whether his painting is indeed a Raphael or simply the work of the master’s studio or a later imitator. Any X-ray or infrared studies of the image, if they have been performed, remain unpublished.

The work is no flea market find. Madonna Leo X is well documented in Raphael literature as a copy of the Louvre’s La belle Jardinière. The Louvre painting is estimated to have been created in 1507-1508. Madonna Leo X has been in Sigg’s family for five generations, having been acquired in the mid-1800s, and is currently held in a safe in Zurich. Few have ever laid eyes on the painting, however, Sigg’s family never having loaned it out for exhibitions.

According to Sigg, however, the Louvre’s version of the image was painted after his. He says it was a copy made by the Giulio Romano-led Raphael studio for France’s King Francis I. Sigg’s Madonna, so he says, was painted in 1513 for Pope Leo X, a member of the storied Medici family of art patrons.

The claims should be taken with a formidable grain of salt, however. Only last year, an art historian in Frankfurt argued that the portrait of Pope Julius II that he had recently acquired was the work of Raphael rather than a copy. Forty years earlier, the version of the painting believed to be “real” swapped from the version hanging in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery to that of the National Gallery in London. Until further testing is published, no new conclusions can be drawn.

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