Madonna paintings to see in London

Paintings of the Virgin Mary, often with the infant Christ, are known as Madonnas. The National Gallery in London holds several, by painters including Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo, and general admission is free.

Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks

The gallery says Raphael turned the familiar subject of the Virgin and Child into something new. Mother and child exchange carnations, the pinks of the title, in a bedchamber in an Italian Renaissance palace.

The painting is small, and may have been meant to be held in the hand for prayer. For more than a century it was thought to be a copy, until it was rediscovered as a Raphael in 1991.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks

This painting was part of a large altarpiece made for the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. The gallery says it replaced a similar picture Leonardo made earlier, now in the Louvre in Paris.

Michelangelo, The Manchester Madonna

The gallery calls this probably the earliest of Michelangelo's surviving paintings. It has carried its name since 1857, when it was shown at the great Manchester Art Exhibition.

It is unfinished. The Virgin's cloak still lacks its coat of ultramarine blue, and the angels on the left were barely begun. The gallery says it does not know why the picture was never completed.

Sassoferrato, The Virgin in Prayer

Painted between 1640 and 1650, this shows the Virgin alone, almost life-size, at prayer. The gallery notes that by the seventeenth century this subject had become very common, and that Sassoferrato himself painted well over a dozen versions.

Visiting

The National Gallery is on Trafalgar Square. It opens daily from 10am to 6pm, and until 9pm on Fridays, and closes from 24 to 26 December and on 1 January.

Walk-up entry is available, or you can book a free ticket for fast-track entry. There is a charge for some exhibitions. Each painting's page on the gallery's website shows the room where it hangs.

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