The Picture of Perfection Unraveling: The Alba Madonna

Not many objects can hope to rival the Alba Madonna. By common consent it is one of the greatest paintings ever made. It’s almost a calling card for all that art achieved in the High Renaissance in Italy. Everything—everything-- that Western artists have produced since then looks back to that moment, and its perfections. You can buy into them or fight them, but you can’t ignore them. The Alba Madonna was painted almost exactly five centuries ago (some time between 1508 and 1511) by Raffaello Sanzio, just “Raphael” to us. He was born in Urbino in 1483, perfected his craft in Florence, then moved to Rome to work for the pope. He died there in 1520. Raphael’s tondo—the term for round pictures such as this—spent its first 150 years tucked away in a provincial church just south of Naples. By the end of the 17th century, it had been widely copied and was described as “wildly famous.” Read Article