e like to believe that Raphael, in one of his daily walks in the country, really did see this mother and her two little boys sitting in a doorway. Of course he must paint them, and having no paper with him he rolled up a barrel and made a sketch on the head of it. The story says that this barrel was once a part of a great oak-tree that stood by the hut of an old man, a hermit up in the mountains. And the mother of the two boys, when a little girl, used to go to see the old man. He loved these two—the little girl and the big oak-tree—and called them his daughters.
He used to say that some day they would both be famous. That was more than four hundred years ago, and to-day this picture of "The Madonna of the Chair" is one of the most famous Madonna pictures. It is found in almost every home in America and is a treasure that belongs to all of us though it hangs in a gallery at Florence, Italy.
We know, too, that Raphael did not let any of his helpers work on "The Madonna of the Chair"—in Italian, "Madonna della Sedia." He painted every brush stroke himself, which makes it still more dear to us.
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