Madonna of the Goldfinch
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Christ reaches toward the bird in his cousin's hand, not away from it. The National Gallery records the legend that the goldfinch's red mark is Christ's own blood, splashed on it when it drew a thorn from his head on the road to Calvary. He knows, and does not flinch. His bare foot rests on his mother's foot; her open book, the Uffizi says, foreshadows the sacrifice, and her finger still marks the page.
Raphael painted it for Lorenzo Nasi's wedding in 1506. A landslide wrecked the Nasi house decades later and broke the panel into seventeen pieces.
Sources: Goldfinch symbolizes the Passion; commission for Lorenzo Nasi's 1506 wedding; pyramidal composition from Leonardo/Michelangelo; museum tombstone facts · Legend of goldfinch plucking a thorn from Christ's crown (framed as legend, not fact); bare-foot touch as humanizing detail; book-in-lap as interrupted-reading/Annunciation motif · 1547 landslide destroyed the Nasi palazzo and shattered the panel into seventeen fragments (restorer's identity deliberately omitted per do_not_print hedge) · The National Gallery, London, collection glossary, 'Goldfinches'.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 7,200 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.