Madonna and Child with St. Anne

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri)is one of the mature religious work of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605-1606 for an altar of the papal grooms (palafrenieri). The painting was briefly exhibited in the parish church for the Vatican, the church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri on the Via di Porta Angelica in Borgo, near the Vatican. It was subsequently sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and now hangs in his ... more

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri)is one of the mature religious work of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605-1606 for an altar of the papal grooms (palafrenieri). The painting was briefly exhibited in the parish church for the Vatican, the church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri on the Via di Porta Angelica in Borgo, near the Vatican. It was subsequently sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and now hangs in his palazzo (Galleria Borghese), where it shares space along with five other Caravaggios: Boy with a basket of fruit, David with the head of Goliath (attributed to 1606), Young sick Bacchus, Saint Jerome Writing, and St John the Baptist in the Desert. While not his most successful arrangement, it is an atypical representation of the Virgin for its time, and must have been shocking to some contemporary viewers. The allegory, at its core, is simple. The Virgin with the aid of her son, whom she holds, tramples on a serpent, the emblem of evil or... less