This artwork was one of Cardinal Federico’s favourites, and he wanted it to be shown very prominently in the Ambrosiana collection. In his treatise Musaeum published in 1625, a fundamental document for the history of the original collection, Borromeo himself stated that the model for this panel was the cartoon by Leonardo, now in the National Gallery in London, from which Luini possibly made a partial tracing. To the composition made by the Tuscan genius, Luini added the figure of Saint Joseph to the left of the Virgin.
We inform our the kind visitors of the Pinacoteca and scholars attending the Library's reading room that the Ambrosiana will be closed to the public from December 4 to 7 included.
The lectures will be grouped into three "knots":"Memory and Christianity, from Augustine to the Modern Age", "Memory in performative and missionary practices" and "Practices of Memory and Mission: from Europe to the Overseas Worlds".
The new Ambrosiana Digital Library was created with the aim of enhancing the main funds (inf., Sup., S.P. and Trotti) through digitization and public and free dissemination via the Internet.
The series of lectures Dante and Europe in the nineteenth century investigates the fortune of the Poet among leading figures of nineteenth-century European culture.
