Madonna della Tenda,

The red and blue of the Virgin Mary’s dress and cape, together with the green of the curtain, form a strong tonal colouring against which the heroic depiction of the Christ Child’s body and the classical, idealised profile of the Mother of God shine out radiantly. The artistically interlaced and pronouncedly painterly defined figures are fitted into a confined pictorial space. Their monumentality is an indication of Raphael’s reception of Michelangelo’s ceiling frescos in the Sistine Chapel. This devotional picture, painted some six or seven years after the ‘Tempi Madonna’, testifies to Raphael’s sove­reign refinement of his painting style in Rome.