The Virgin and Child with St Anne

Saint Anne holds her daughter the Virgin on her lap, and Mary leans down to draw the Christ Child gently back from the lamb he has clambered onto - the lamb of his sacrifice, which the child embraces and the mother would hold him from, while Anne looks on in calm acceptance of what must come. Leonardo nests the three generations into one shifting, interlocking pyramid against a dissolving blue mountain haze, reworking it for years and never quite finishing. The design rippled outward through a generation: Raphael's Holy Family with a lamb and del Sarto's Madonnas in this collection all descend from it.