[2] After a century and a half in Italy, it was in the collection of the Dukes of Alba in Spain until 1836, when it was sold to Nicholas I of Russia, and it became one of the highlights of the Imperial Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

[3] Arranged about the figures are symbolic flowers: lady's bedstraw for childbirth, cyclamen for love and sorrow, violets for humility, dandelions and red-centred anemones for the Passion of Jesus.

The tondo painting, on a round wood panel with diameter 94.5 cm (37.2 in), was commissioned by Paolo Giovio, after Raphael had left Florence in 1508 to live in Rome.

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon has described the painting as "a breathtakingly beautiful work of art", linking her position on the ground to the iconography of the Madonna of Humility, but "her statuesque grandeur calls to mind earlier Renaissance images of the Madonna della Misericordia – images of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven and protectress of all humanity.

Mellon donated his collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on its foundation in 1937, after a long squabble with the Roosevelt administration over his tax liabilities for the purchase.