Alba Madonna

The Alba Madonna

c. 1510 · Painting · 98 × 98 cm

MasterpieceNo. 83of the world's hundred most famous paintings

About the painting

The Alba Madonna is a tondo (circular) oil on wood transferred to canvas painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, created c. 1510, depicting Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist in a typical Italian countryside.

After a century and a half in Italy, it was in the collection of the Dukes of Alba in Spain until 1836, when it was sold to Nicholas I of Russia, and it became one of the highlights of the Imperial Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Clandestinely sold to Andrew W. Mellon by the government of the Soviet Union in 1931, it has been held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., since 1937.

Meanwhile, in the life of Raphael

The whole life

c. 1504 – c. 1508 · Workplace
Florence
1508
Moves to Rome at the invitation of Julius II
The new pope, Julius II, invited Raphael to Rome, perhaps at the suggestion of his architect Bramante, a distant relative of the artist. Unlike Michelangelo, kept waiting for months after his summons, Raphael was immediately commissioned to fresco what was to become the pope's private library, a far larger commission than any he had had before.
1508–1520 · Workplace
Rome
c. 1510
Marcantonio Raimondi engraves his designs
Raphael made no prints himself, but his pupils and assistants, above all Marcantonio Raimondi, engraved his drawings; around 1510 came “The Judgement of Paris”. The prints were sold in street shops and bought by maiolica painters, jewellers and carvers.
1511
Under the spell of Michelangelo's ceiling
According to Vasari, Bramante let Raphael into the Sistine Chapel secretly, and while painting the Stanza he was clearly influenced by Michelangelo's ceiling, as in his portrait of Michelangelo himself as Heraclitus in “The School of Athens”. Michelangelo accused him of plagiarism and years later complained that “everything he knew about art he got from me”.