Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist

CC0 Public Domain Designation

c. 1515

Correggio (Antonio Allegri; Italian, 1489–1534)

In this intimate devotional panel, the young Correggio demonstrated his own evolving style while also assimilating lessons from other great painters of his era. The work’s pyramidal grouping of figures reflects the style of Raphael, while their soft outlines and the Virgin’s enigmatic smile recall the work of Leonardo da Vinci. The landscape in the background adds to the painting’s charm and demonstrates the artist’s knowledge of Northern European precedents. The gentle sensuousness of the figures and the tenderness they show one another, however, are unique to Correggio. The artist used color, light, and shadow to bathe the image in a gentle glow, with skin and fabrics taking on a velvety texture.

Correggio lived and worked in the northern Italian city of Parma, executing a body of work that is remarkable for its inventiveness and sophistication given his remove from the artistic centers of Rome, Florence, and Venice. This small panel is in his earliest style, but its idyllic quality presages the radiant ceiling frescoes of Correggio’s maturity, especially those in Parma’s cathedral (1526–30).

Status: On View, Gallery 205
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Antonio da Correggio
Title: Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1510–1520
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 64.2 × 50.2 cm (25 1/4 × 19 3/4 in.); Framed: 79.4 × 63.9 × 8.3 cm (31 1/4 × 25 1/8 × 3 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Clyde M. Carr Fund
Reference Number: 1965.688
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/23972/manifest.json

C.P. Landon, Galerie de M. Massias, ancien résident de France à Carlsruhe… (Paris, 1815), p. 17, pl. 6.
“Accessions of Canadian and American Museums, October-December 1965,” Art Quarterly 29 (1966), p. 71, cover ill.
Myron Laskin, Jr., “A New Correggio for Chicago,” Burlington Magazine 107, (1966), p. 190.
John Maxon, “Correggio’s Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John, ” Art News 66, no. 2 (1966), pp. 31-32, 64-65 (color ill.).
“The Sensual Innocent,” Time Magazine 87, no. 14 (1966), pp. 78-79 (color ill.).
John Maxon, “Some Recent Acquisitions,” Apollo 84 (1966), p. 221, fig. 3.
“La Chronique des arts,” Gazette des beaux arts ser. 6, 69 (1967), suppl. no. 1177, p. 69, no. 253 (ill.).
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, vol. I (London, 1968), p. 92.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (London, 1970), p. 93, no. 30 (ill.).
Alberto Bevilacqua and Arturo Carlo Quitavalle, L’opera completa del Correggio ( Milan, 1970), no. 30 (ill.).
D. A. Brown, “Correggio’s Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John,” The Art Instite of Chicago Museum Studies 7 (1972), pp. 7-33, fig. 1.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 56, 3336, 571.
Cecil Gould, The Paintings of Correggio (Ithaca, NY, 1976), pp. 43, 46, 47, 58, 169, 199, pl. 16
A. H. Zerner and A. C. Quintavalle, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Corrège (Paris, 1977), pp. 86, 93, no. 29, no. 30.
The Art Institute of Chicago: 100 Masterpieces (Chicago, 1978), p. 47, no. 10 (color ill.).
D. A. Brown, The Young Correggio and His Leonardesque Sources (New York and London), 1981, pp. 68-69, 74-80, 98, 194-96, no. 11, fig. 18.
Important Old Master Paintings and Discoveries of the Past Year, exh. cat. ( New York, Piero Corsini, Inc., 1986), pp. 18, 21, no. 4, under no. 4.
Cecil Gould in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, exh. cat. (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 1986), under no. 28.
Cecil Gould, “A Major New Attribution to the Young Correggio,” Artibus et historiae 18 (1988), p. 9.
Master Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1988), p. 20 (color ill.).
P. Piva, Correggio giovane e l’affresco retrovato de San Benedetto in Polirone (Turin, 1988), pp. 155, 166, 168, 173, pl. xiv.
Christopher Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago (Princeton, N.J., 1993), pp. 67-72, (ill.).
James Rondeau, ed., Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2025), 27 (ill.).
James Rondeau, ed., Highlights of the Art Institute of Chicago (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2026), 62, 258, no. 37, (ill.).

The Art Institute of Chicago, Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey, October 16, 1999 – January 9, 2000, included in the gallery that held Viola’s The Greeting for the Chicago venue.

Baron Nicholas Massias, Paris, by 1815; sold Laneuville and Lacoste, Paris, December 13 or following, 1825 (originally scheduled for December 14, 1824), no. 27, as Bernardo Luini, for Fr 4,000 [according to Landon 1815, p. 17]. Private collection, Germany [statement from Wildenstein and correspondence of John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago Archives; Maxon recounted that the Milanese collector cited below bought the picture sometime around the beginning or end of World War II at an unidentified public auction in Germany as Italian, first quarter of the sixteenth century]. Minari collection, Milan [statement of Wildenstein (without reference to collector’s name) and Maxon papers, The Art Institute of Chicago]. Wildenstein, New York; sold to the Art Institute, 1965.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.