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We're in the Louvre and we're looking at a painting by Raphael called

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La Belle Jardiniere, and its a lovely Raphael Madonna, and child

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with the infant Saint John the Baptist in that pyramid

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composition that we often associate with the high Renascence

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What's interesting is the virgin Mary is not in a religious enviroment

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we see no archway, and she's got no throne

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if we argue if she had a throne at all it would be

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the throne of nature. She sits on a rock in a field with

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a beautiful atmoshphere and persecptive behind her creating this

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lovely verdant enviroment. As we look down

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at the foreground we see plants and perhaps the edge of

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a pond, and little flowers, the loveliest passages to me are

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the way that Christ on the left, stands on his mother's

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foot, really showing that kind of dependence on his mother

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and yet also a growing sense of independence as he seeks to take the book

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out of her hands, and looks up at her.

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And of course, the content of that the book foretells his own demise

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and it foretells the crucifiction. And the look on Mary's face is one that suggests

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that she knows this, she's looking at him in a sense gaged wheter or not

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he's ready for that knowledge. She puts her right arm around him protecting him

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and, seems to hesitate for a moment with her left hand

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whether to allow him to take that book, or not.

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Same with John the Baptist who kneels in prayer towards Christ

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is on-- a very graceful pose,he kneels down on his right knee

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tilts his neck up, and looks up at Christ. We have that high Renascence gracefulness

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and ideal beuaty. Let's look for just a moment at

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the gazes in the painting. I think you're right to start with John the Baptist,

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and his eyes gazing up at Christ, who in turns body and face moves up to Mary

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Mary then returns that gaze and sends our gaze back down

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to Christ. So, everyone's gaze is really focused on Christ

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And now we're sorta in the middle of that triangle

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as we watch them look at each other. And Mary is ideally

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beautiful and we have only the faintest outline of a halo

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that halo is disappearing as we enter the high Renascence, because

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the figures exude a kind of divinity by their ideal beauty.

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We don't need that symbol of a halo anymore. And for Raphael, its nature that

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takes on that role, no longer that stage props of divinity necessary as you said,

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but its the landscape itself, its god's world, that he has created

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that is in an expression of divinity, and its beauty itself that is the expression

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of divinity here. Mary's beauty, Christ's beauty, and even John's beauty.