#madonna

The odd name comes from the Cowper family, who used to own it — nothing to do with the subject. Like a lot of British collections, it eventually made its way into an American museum in the early 1900s.

This used to be shown as the middle piece of a bigger altarpiece — five panels, according to the National Gallery — until they got separated somewhere along the way. It was even catalogued as someone else's work for a while before curators settled on who actually painted it.

This one has had an odd trip: it belonged to the Russian imperial collection at one point, and the Soviet government sold it off in the 1930s to raise cash — that's apparently how it ended up in Washington.

The candles in this one apparently weren't just decorative — real ones were meant to burn in front of it, so the painted flames would blur together with the real light in a dim room.