Madonna and Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist

Jacopino del Conte · 1535–40

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

165.5 × 126.7 × 5.8 cm (65 3/16 × 49 15/16 × 2 5/16 in.); Framed: 198.5 × 159.6 × 32.3 cm (78 1/8 × 62 13/16 × 12 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

This intimate devotional panel brings together the Madonna, Christ Child, Saint Elizabeth, and the young John the Baptist in a composition of quiet tenderness and Mannerist refinement. Jacopino del Conte trained in Florence under Andrea del Sarto before settling in Rome, where he became one of the most sought-after religious painters of the mid-sixteenth century. His work sits at the crossroads of High Renaissance harmony and early Mannerist elegance — figures are idealized yet warm, draped in rich, carefully modeled fabric, and arranged with a sculptor's sense of weight and presence. In this panel, the interplay of glances between the figures creates an almost choreographed sense of sacred intimacy, characteristic of his devotional style. Del Conte was a close friend of Michelangelo and painted one of the most widely accepted portraits of the great master — a testament to the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is worked on the same medium as the original — panel — and executed by a trained oil painter who studies the Art Institute's work directly, matching del Conte's layered flesh tones, the luminous depth of the drapery, and the delicate relationships of light and shadow that give this painting its sense of hushed devotion.