Mary is seen from the side, seated on a 'chamber chair', a type of seat reserved for the high dignitaries of the papal court. She just lifts one leg to better accommodate the body of her Son, clasping it against her chest, while St.
John, on the right, casts an intense gaze at them, extending his hands in sign of prayer. The complex and formidable interlocking of the arms between mother and son, the slight inclination of Mary's face gently touching Jesus' temple while at the same time staring and attracting the viewer, generate a perfect play of correspondences accompanied by the colour combinations: from the white interwoven with golden wefts of the turban, to the symphonies of greens and reds of the Virgin's scarf; from the red of the sleeve juxtaposed with the yellow of the Child's tunic, to the ultramarine blue of the dress.
The three figures are arranged in such a way as to follow the circular shape of the table with extraordinary naturalness, bound together not only by gestures but above all by the play of glances, each of which expresses with particular emotional nuance the veil of melancholy that accompanies this representation in which there is both the joy of childhood and the awareness of Christ's sacrifice as an adult. The dark background gives prominence to the trio of figures, illuminated from the right with a warm light that casts delicate shadows.
Here he develops the embrace between Mary and Jesus in a complicated yet very natural way, continuing an investigation that had already begun with the Madonna Tempi circa, Alte Pinakothek in Munich and was later repeated in variations in the Madonna of the Tent circa, Alte Pinakothek in Munich. These compositions all stem from a model that was very important not only for Raphael, but also for many of his contemporary painters and sculptors: Donatello's Madonna and Child, which was owned by the Florentine merchant Piero del Pugliese and later became part of the Medici collections The so-called "Dudley Madonna" is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, A.
In that wafer-thin Donatello marble, Raphael had found the perfect inspiration to depict the relationship between the two protagonists with a sense of intimate everyday life, capturing especially the curving of the Virgin's head and the raised right leg on which the Child's back rests.
