Madonna and Child with Infant St. John the Baptist

Antonio del Ceraiolo was a Florentine painter who worked in the circle of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, and whose devotional works reflect the persistence of Florentine Madonna composition conventions into the early Cinquecento. This Madonna and Child with Infant St. John the Baptist, dated around 1520 and held in the Cincinnati Art Museum, belongs to the type of compositional group that Leonardo had explored in his Virgin of the Rocks and which Florentine painters continued to elaborate. The Cincinnati Art Museum's holding reflects the American collecting of Italian Renaissance paintings.

Ceraiolo groups the three figures in the Florentine tradition with careful attention to the compositional relationship between the two children. The influence of Leonardo and Raphael is evident in the pyramidal grouping and soft sfumato modelling in a warm, devotional palette.