The Virgin and Child with John the Baptist (The Alba Madonna)

1510

Raphael (Raffaello Santi)

Tempera on canvas (transferred from panel)

National Gallery, Washington

The Madonna Alba is highly characteristic of the artist’s quest for decorative solutions in easel painting.

The presentation of the group of figures in a round format shows amazing master. The Madonna is portrayed seated on the ground, leaning towards the stump of a tree. She has been distracted from reading a prayer book and has placed one hand on the shoulder of the young John the Baptist. Her head is covered in what looks like a turban decoration and her traditional red dress delineates her chest. We see beneath a blue cloak that she wears a light sandal on her foot which reminds us of the footwear of the ancient Romans. Jesus receives from John the Baptist a cane cross which is the symbol of his future crucifixion. The scene is set against an open landscape and the whole composition is presented within a circle (tondo) having a diameter of 94.5 ñm. The extensive vegetation in the foreground is not only decorative but conceals a certain symbolism. The lapels of John the Baptist’s cloak have anemones on them. Christianity took over the anemone from Antiquity, where it was linked with the worship of Adonis, who personified both death and the renewal of nature. The red spots on the flowers remind us of the droplets of blood shed by Christ. The dandelions with their bitter sap were seen as a hint at the passion of the Lord. One of Mary’s main virtues, humility, is symbolized by violets, which are modest, pale flowers with a pleasant aroma growing in low-lying, isolated areas.

The tondo form requires that the artist have a brilliant command of composition and it appears in a number of Raphael’s works, for example in the State Hermitage’s Madonna Conestabile. But in this early work what is determinant is in the foreground, whereas in the Madonna Conestabile we have an impression of spherical space. Here everything is subordinated to the circle – poses, gestures, movement. Mary leans towards John the Baptist and embraces him in such a way that the personages fit into an invisible but apparent personages fit into an invisible but apparent circle which harmonizes with the contours of the painting. As A. N. Benois wrote in his Guidebook to the Picture Gallery of the Imperial Hermitage (1910), “This painting can be compared with a beautiful building in which everything is rhythmic, some parts support others, everything is robust and full of happiness, because it corresponds to some requirement for harmony that is programmed in us.” The line of the horizon passes just below the Madonna’s shoulders and only her head is silhouetted against the sky - a solution which confers on the figure an emphatic monumentalism and importance.