Sistine Madonna

At the bottom of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, two small putti rest their elbows on a painted frame. They are looking up, and they are looking bored. The two putti were added late in the composition. Legend, unverifiable, says Raphael sketched them from the children of his model who wandered into the studio while he was working. Another version claims he spotted two street children pressed against a bakery window. The painting hung above the altar of the Benedictine church of San Sisto in Piacenza for two centuries before Augustus III of Saxony bought it in 1754. By the nineteenth century the two putti had been cut out and reproduced on wallpaper, cushions, and postcards across Europe. They had become more famous than the Virgin they were painted beneath. Now at Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden @skd.museum