Madonna and Child with Saints Lucy, Dominic, and Louis of France

Painted on a small copper plate about 1596 to 1598, Annibale Carracci’s composition is at once intimate and monumental — an altarpiece in miniature. The Virgin, wrapped in a blue mantle over a red dress, sits at the left and holds a book resting on a basket containing a small white robe; the lively Christ Child, balanced precariously on a pillow, clutches his mother’s dress with one arm while gesturing with the other toward Saint Lucy, whose eyes rest on their customary plate. The veiled saint, Saint Dominic with his lily, and the crowned royal saint Louis of France complete the company, their tender exchange rendered in the soft, classicizing naturalism that Annibale and his Bolognese school were carrying into the new Baroque. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.