Painted at the moment when Raphael made the transition from Urbino to Florence, _The Small Cowper Madonna,_ one of the greatest Renaissance paintings in America, stands at the beginning of the highly influential Madonnas which secured Raphael's reputation. The Worcester Art Museum displayed the Cowper Madonna with their own Northbrook Madonna, a work that came into the museum's collection in 1940 with an attribution to Raphael that has long been discarded, but without clear consensus on what relationship the work bears to Raphael and his studio. The two-painting installation also addresses the underdrawing of the two pictures, and explores Raphael's masterful interpretation and the spread of his early style among followers in Central Italy. Pictured: Raphael, Italian, 1483-1520 The Small Cowper Madonna (detail) about 1505, oil on wood Widener Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1942.9.57
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