Room 26

Christ blesses the viewer with his right hand. Antonello has altered the original position of the fingers and hand, foreshortening them – that is, compressing their real length – so that they appear to be projecting out of the picture. If you look closely, you can see the outlines of their initi...

Christ’s body hangs limply on the Cross; the torment of his crucifixion is almost over. He is supported in his final moments by the Virgin Mary and his disciple John the Evangelist. Antonello has composed the picture with a low viewpoint; it is as if we are looking up at a Crucifix placed upon an...

The Virgin Mary sits under a tree in a simple gown of faded rose, her work basket with its iron shears and ball of grey wool at her side. She is trying a grey jacket she has just made on the Christ Child, which may be the seamless coat that legend claims grew with him and for which the soldiers c...

The Three Kings – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar – present gifts to the Christ Child in the ruins of a grand building. The Virgin Mary sits on the edge of the manger while Saint Joseph, her husband, comes down a staircase just visible to the left. A crowd of curious onlookers, some wearing turban...

Christ’s body has just been brought down from the Cross and is being prepared for burial – the square door to his tomb is visible in the rock face on the right. His mother embraces him tenderly, while Mary Magdalene anoints his feet. Another woman washes his wounds with water from a brass basin w...

The Virgin and Child are enthroned in a walled garden with three saints. Saint Mary Magdalene holds her pot of oil, while the richly dressed Saint Barbara has a tower – her attribute, or emblem – in her headdress. The wheel on which Saint Catherine was tortured is visible behind her, and Christ p...

The Virgin Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, embrace at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. Long childless, they had been told by an angel that they would have a daughter. On the right is Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks.This was the left side of a large altarpiece; the right side...

A deer cowers in the protective arms of an elderly man; an arrow sticks out of his hand, which rests on the deer’s back. A richly dressed man and a cleric kneel before him; a group of hunters crowd behind them. The wounded man is Saint Giles, a popular French saint who was mistakenly shot when hu...

The Virgin Mary, bareheaded and richly dressed, holds the naked Christ Child, who rests on a white cushion on a ledge. We are not sure whether the painting was once part of a triptych (a painting made up of three sections) or stood alone. The infant Christ could be blessing a donor in a panel on...

Catherine of Alexandria, a fourth-century princess, was converted to Christianity and in a vision underwent a mystic marriage with Christ. When she would not give up her faith, Emperor Maxentius ordered that she be bound to a spiked wheel and tortured to death. However, a thunderbolt destroyed th...

This painting is the only surviving scene from the predella (base) of Raphael’s altarpiece for the Ansidei chapel in S. Fiorenzo, Perugia. The main panel of the altarpiece, ‘The Ansidei Madonna’, is also in the National Gallery’s collection. This predella panel would have been placed beneath the...

While resting in the shade of a bay tree, the young soldier Scipio has a vision of Virtue and her adversary Pleasure. Virtue promises Scipio honour, fame and glory through victory in war. Pleasure, with fragrant flowing hair, promises a life of ease and serenity.Raphael interpreted the theme not...

In this painting, Raphael transforms the familiar subject of the Virgin and Child into something entirely new. The figures are no longer posed stiffly and formally as in paintings by earlier artists, but display all the tender emotions one might expect between a young mother and her child. The pa...

This is one of three scenes from the predella of Raphael’s Colonna Altarpiece painted for the convent of S. Antonio da Padua in Perugia. The Procession to Calvary was the central scene of the predella, positioned below the main panel of the altarpiece.Christ looks to us as he carries the Cross, h...