Raphael and the Madonna

The Virgin Mary features in more Renaissance paintings than any other subject, yet Raphael’s Sistine Madonna towers over them all in artistic and theological significance. A groundbreaking accomplishment, Raphael’s Madonna breaks through clouds, flanked by saints, while two famously wistful cherubim look up from an unseen altar. In Raphael and the Madonna, Stephan Koja illuminates the pivotal place of this masterwork in the aesthetic and religious debates of the sixteenth century.