Madonna and Child

Carlo Maratti, a preeminent painter in late 17th-century Rome, was nicknamed Carluccio delle Madonne, or Little Carlo of the Madonnas. He produced an endless variety of works depicting an idealized, comforting vision of the Virgin and Child. This chubby infant Christ, holding an apple, looks piously up toward God while his somber mother and an adolescent angel seem to contemplate his fate. The painting may be a very late work by Maratti—an old inscription on the back of the canvas dates it to 1711—or it may have been done by one of his many Roman followers.