The Sistine Madonna
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
A curtain has been drawn back — Raphael painted the rod and its rings — and she is walking out of it toward you. Eberlein read it as a tabernacle veil: the Incarnation's housing, opened to carry a body out.
St Sixtus has set his tiara down on the ledge at the very front, and there is a gold acorn on its tip: the della Rovere acorn, the pope's family mark, laid at the threshold.
In Piacenza she was not looking at you. She and the Child looked past you, at the back of a crucifix on the screen opposite.
Sources: the gazes directed at the back of the crucifix on the choir screen; the angels in the cloud · the painted curtain rod and rings · the acorn on the tiara and oak leaves on the cope as the della Rovere device · Johann Konrad Eberlein, "The Curtain in Raphael's Sistine Madonna", The Art Bulletin 65, no. 1 (1983), 61-77.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 9,546 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.