Sistine Madonna

Green curtains part as if on a vision, and the Virgin walks toward us across the clouds carrying the Christ Child, Saint Sixtus gesturing up from the left and Saint Barbara lowering her eyes at the right. Her gaze is direct and faintly troubled, as though she already sees where the child is bound. At the very bottom lean two winged cherubs, chins on hands, gazing up - a fragment so beloved it long ago floated free of the altarpiece to decorate the whole world. Painted for a church in Piacenza, it is Raphael's Madonna at her most tender and most grand.