Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist

Correggio

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Period

1500-1550

Theme

Power & Politics

Medium

Oil on panel

Current Location

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

The Story

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Italian: Sant'Anna, la Vergine e il Bambino con l'agnellino) is an unfinished oil painting by High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1501–1519. It depicts Saint Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grasping a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo.

Created in 1510 during the 1500-1550 period, this work belongs firmly within the power & politics tradition. Correggio worked at a moment when the rediscovery of classical antiquity reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

Executed in Oil on panel, measuring 64.2 × 50.2 cm (25 1/4 × 19 3/4 in.); Framed: 79.4 × 63.9 × 8.3 cm (31 1/4 × 25 1/8 × 3 1/4 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Correggio builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Renaissance practice.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”

What the painting depicts

Christ Child, Mary, landscape, Saint Anne, lamb, Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, tree, drapery.

From the museum

In this intimate devotional panel, the young Correggio demonstrated his own evolving style while also assimilating lessons from other great painters of his era. The work’s pyramidal grouping of figures reflects the style of Raphael, while their soft outlines and the Virgin’s enigmatic smile recall the work of Leonardo da Vinci. The landscape in the background adds to the painting’s charm and demonstrates the artist’s knowledge of Northern European precedents. The gentle sensuousness of the figures and the tenderness they show one another, however, are unique to Correggio. The artist used color, light, and shadow to bathe the image in a gentle glow, with skin and fabrics taking on a velvety texture. Correggio lived and worked in the northern Italian city of Parma, executing a body of work that is remarkable for its inventiveness and sophistication given his remove from the artistic centers of Rome, Florence, and Venice. This small panel is in his earliest style, but its idyllic quality presages the radiant ceiling frescoes of Correggio’s maturity, especially those in Parma’s cathedral (1526–30).

Clyde M. Carr Fund

Materials & technique

Materials: oil paint, poplar panel.

Technique: painting (image making), oil painting, painting, painting techniques, panel painting.

Provenance

Baron Nicholas Massias, Paris, by 1815; sold Laneuville and Lacoste, Paris, December 13 or following, 1825 (originally scheduled for December 14, 1824), no. 27, as Bernardo Luini, for Fr 4,000 [according to Landon 1815, p. 17]. Private collection, Germany [statement from Wildenstein and correspondence of John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago Archives; Maxon recounted that the Milanese collector cited below bought the picture sometime around the beginning or end of World War II at an unidentified public auction in Germany as Italian, first quarter of the sixteenth century]. Minari collection, Milan [statement of Wildenstein (without reference to collector's name) and Maxon papers, The Art Institute of Chicago]. Wildenstein, New York; sold to the Art Institute, 1965.

Where to see Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. View on the museum’s official page.

See more works at Art Institute of Chicago or browse the full Correggio collection.

A restrained palette and sculptural lighting create a solemn geometry. The wooden crate and letter anchor the narrative with journalistic precision.

Sources

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_and_Child_with_Saint_Anne_(Leonardo) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Museum: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/23972
Text adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 3.0.