Raphael painted this altarpiece around 1504/5 for the Franciscan convent of Sant’ Antonio in Perugia. It hung in a part of the church reserved for the nuns, who may have insisted on its conservative details, such as the elaborately clothed Christ Child. By contrast, the weighty male saints look to the future—the recent works by Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo that Raphael had just begun to study in Florence. The nuns sold their altarpiece in 1678, and in the early twentieth century its purchase by J. Pierpont Morgan received clamorous press coverage. For more information about this painting, including a reconstruction of the altarpiece, visit metmuseum.org.