Raphael (Italian, 1483-1520): Madonna of the Goldfinch, c.1506 (Oil on poplar panel. Uffizi, Florence) - The meeting of the infant Saint John the Baptist and Christ is from an extra biblical source known as the Pseudo-Bonaventura. The Virgin is seated on a rock and in bare feet, in adherence to the theme described as the Madonna of Humility. The Virgin holds a book but does not glance at it directly. The focal point is the European Goldfinch, a bird symbolically linked to the Passion owing to the fact that it feeds while perched on thorns…