Conestabile Madonna

The Conestabile Madonna is a small tondo painting, 17.5 by 18 centimetres, created around 1502 to 1504 by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael in tempera, originally on wood and later transferred to canvas. It depicts Mary and the infant Christ reading a book before an outdoor landscape; X-ray analysis has shown that Raphael originally painted Mary holding an apple or pomegranate before altering the object to a book. The painting passed through the Alfani family of Perugia before Tsar Alexander II purchased it in 1871, and it has been held at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg since 1880. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/