The Alba Madonna

Raphael

Seamless integration of form and meaning is a hallmark of the High Renaissance, a brief moment when a timeless, classical style balanced the perceptual and the conceptual attractions of art. Raphael reached this point of perfect counterpoise after assimilating lessons from Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the art of ancient Rome—all of which we see reflected in The Alba Madonna.

The natural relation of the figures to each other and their landscape setting, and the way these relationships are integral to the “story” being told, were innovations Raphael drew from Leonardo. The three figures define a broad pyramid to convey strength and stability. But notice the extent to which their bodies and poses respond to the circular form: the bend of the Virgin’s leg and elbow, her soft face and domed turban, her arm encircling Saint John, his fur garment that sweeps around him to complete the curve. The circle of the tondo, an ideal and infinite shape, evokes the heavens, the idea of divine perfection, and the hope for salvation granted through Christ’s sacrifice. Even the plants contribute to this meaning.

From the Middle Ages, artists used plants and flowers symbolically, and Raphael also uses them to amplify meaning. Shoots of Lady’s Bedstraw, a yellow wildflower with medicinal properties believed to ease childbirth, were said to have been found in the manger where Jesus was born.

Raphael, *The Alba Madonna*, c. 1510 (detail)

Cyclamen (top) alludes to the Virgin’s love and sorrow, and violets (bottom) remind us of her humility.

Raphael, *The Alba Madonna*, c. 1510 (detail)

Dandelions (top) recall the bitterness of the Passion, as do the deep red centers of the anemones (bottom) on John’s fur robe.

Raphael, *The Alba Madonna*, c. 1510 (detail)

In Rome, where The Alba Madonna was painted, Raphael had been able to view work in progress on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes. We see the same robustness and large scale in Raphael’s figures. Compare the physical presence of the The Alba Madonna with pictures of the Virgin and Child Raphael painted in Florence only a few years earlier.

Madonna and child images
in the National Gallery of Art collection

Seen from the lap up, a woman wearing a marine-blue robe over a crimson-red dress holds a nude baby boy on her lap in this vertical painting. Both people have smooth, pale, peachy skin. The woman sits with her body angled to our left and she looks down at or toward the baby. Her blond hair is pulled back with a blue ribbon or covering at the back of her head. She has delicately arching eyebrows, a long, straight nose, and her small pink lips are closed. The moss-green underside of her blue robe is visible where it turns back over her wrists and around her neck. Her red dress is edged with black along the squared neckline and tied at the waist with a black band. She supports the seated baby with her right hand, on our left, and holds her other hand at the ready near his legs. The baby sits angled to our right, toward the woman, but he turns to look over his shoulder to our left. His blond hair falls to a point over his forehead. He has delicate features with light brown eyes, a small, pointed nose, and a small, pink mouth. He also has pudgy, baby-like cheeks, tummy, arms, and legs. The horizon of the landscape behind the pair comes about three-quarters of the way up the panel, behind the woman’s shoulders. Hazy blue mountains, trees, and the suggestion of a town with buildings and a church spire line the horizon in the deep distance beneath a pale blue sky.

A woman and nude child, both with pale skin, sit in front of a deep landscape in this vertical painting. Shown from about the knees up, the woman’s body is angled slightly to our right, and she supports the baby under his bottom with her left hand, on our right. She wears a long-sleeved, crimson-red dress with a sheer, nearly translucent fabric around her shoulders. Fern-green drapery, nearly matching the color of the grassy landscape, is gathered behind her hips, and a deep lapis-blue cloth lies across her lap. Her blond hair is pulled back. She has a straight nose, rosy cheeks, and her pink lips are closed. Her head tilts to our left, and she gazes down and to our right with brown eyes. Her right hand, on our left, rests in her lap, and she holds the baby with her other hand. The blond baby half sits, half stands on the woman’s lap so one foot rests on the hand in the woman’s lap. He reaches his arms around her neck and turns to look over his left shoulder, also gazing down and to our right. Thin, gold halos above their heads are barely visible against the pale blue sky. An expanse of green grass extends behind the pair leading to a cluster of trees to our left and buildings on a distant hill to our right. Hazy blue hills line the horizon in the distance below a blue, nearly cloudless sky.

Drawn with gray chalk lines and smudges against dark tan paper, a woman sits facing to our left on a low wall, with two toddler-aged babies at her feet, filling this vertical drawing. Their bodies are outlined with smoke-gray lines and filled in with paler gray areas, giving the drawing an almost ghostly look against the dark paper. Both children have short hair and rounded, pudgy bodies. The woman has a subtly rounded figure, a straight nose, and smooth cheeks; her bow lips are closed. Her wavy hair is loosely pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. Her dress, with a scooped neckline, is cinched at the waist before flaring into a voluminous skirt. She smiles down at the nude baby who stands to our left, looking up at her and leaning against her knees with his weight mostly on his right foot. Her left hand holds his left arm, which reaches across her lap toward a book she presses against her side with her left forearm. His right hand touches her left knee, nearest us, and her right hand passes behind him to caress his shoulders. The second child kneels in a crouch near the woman’s legs, to our right. Leaning on a slender staff like a walking stick, he wears a garland of leaves in his hair and looks up toward the other boy. Chalk strokes and white highlights around his torso suggest he is wrapped in drapery. Some details are difficult to make out because some of the charcoal-gray lines are loosely sketched and retraced. The corners and edges of the paper are chipped, revealing an underlying surface to which it is attached, and there are crease lines that suggest that the paper was likely folded in the past.

Here monumentality lends seriousness of purpose—gravitas further underscored by Raphael’s evocation of ancient art. The Madonna’s complex pose recalls classical sculpture, and her dress is that of a Roman matron. Even her sandal is based on those worn by a celebrated ancient sculpture in the papal collection.

Such a mélange of diverse influences might, in the hands of a lesser artist, produce a work that is formulaic or lifeless, but The Alba Madonna is warmed by compassion and incandescent beauty. Its meaning is made human with an easy grace. No wonder subsequent generations found Raphael’s art an ideal of harmony and perfection.

About the Artist

Self portrait (chalk heightened with white on paper), Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino) (1483-1520) / Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library

Raphael, Self portrait (chalk heightened with white on paper). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library.

Raffaelo di Giovanni Santi was the younger contemporary of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and with them epitomizes the High Renaissance in Italy. For most of the history of Western art, the easy grace and harmonious balance of Raphael’s style has represented an ideal of perfection. A man noted also for wit and charm, he has often been called the “prince of painters.”

Raphael must have studied first with his father, painter at the court of Urbino, an environment rich in the arts and humanist learning. The elder Santi died when the boy was 11. Whether Raphael entered the workshop of Perugino at that time or, as seems more likely, many years later when he was already an acknowledged artist, he quickly mastered Perugino’s delicate, ornamental style, with its open landscapes and gentle figures. It was said that contemporaries had trouble distinguishing Perugino’s work from Raphael’s, but Raphael’s compositions were more sophisticated even when he was a young artist.

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Artist Information
Raphael (Marchigian, 1483 - 1520)

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A woman and two children, all with pale skin and flushed cheeks, sit together in a landscape in this round painting. The woman takes up most of the composition as she sits with her right leg, to our left, tucked under her body. Her other leg, on our right, is bent so the foot rests on the ground, and that knee angles up and out to the side. She wears a rose-pink dress under a topaz-blue robe, and a finger between the pages of a closed book holds her place. Her brown hair is twisted away from her face. She has delicate features and her pink lips are closed. She looks and leans to our left around a nude young boy who half-sits and half-stands against her bent leg. The boy has blond hair and pudgy, toddler-like cheeks and body. The boy reaches his right hand, on our left, to grasp the tall, thin cross held by the second young boy, who sits on the ground next to the pair. This second boy has darker brown hair and wears a garment resembling animal fur. The boy kneels facing the woman and looks up at her and the blond boy. The trio sits on a flat, grassy area in front of a body of water painted light turquoise. Mountains in the deep distance are pale azure blue beneath a nearly clear blue sky. — Raphael, *The Alba Madonna*, c. 1510, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.24

Late in 1504, Raphael moved to Florence, drawn there by accounts of Leonardo’s work there. Leonardo’s softly shadowed forms, natural figure groupings, and simplified settings were all stunningly new—and Raphael responded quickly to them. In 1508 the pope called Raphael to Rome. Influenced by the idealized, classical art of the city's ancient past, Raphael’s work took on a new grandeur. He also responded to the more the energetic and physical style of Michelangelo, whose works he had already begun to study in Florence.

Raphael remained in Rome for the last 12 years of his life. In those years he was extremely active, preparing monumental frescoes for the papal chambers, designing tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, and painting scenes that captured mythological stories with delight and exuberance. His work became widely influential through the dissemination of prints. Raphael was also the city’s leading portraitist, creating penetrating psychological images that engaged viewer and sitter with a new intensity. When he died at age 37, the pope ordered that Raphael, who had been keeper of antiquities, be buried in the Pantheon.

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