Owned for centuries by the aristocratic Roman Aldobrandini family, the painting has been in the collection of the National Gallery in London since 1865.

[4] The Christ Child sits naturally in the lap of the Virgin and is handed a carnation, a symbol of his future Passion, by Saint John.

[6] Raphael appears to have a special affinity for the relationship between the infant Jesus and his similarly aged cousin John.

[7] Raphael's Madonnas from his early Roman years had evolved from those of his Umbrian and Florentine periods, and are more informal in dress and pose.

[6] The painting contrasts significantly with the Ansidei Madonna (1505) of Raphael's earlier Florentine period, influenced by the strict expression of divinity of the Umbrian School.

This is due in part to the difference between the gaunt woman of Umbria and the beautiful women of Trastevere and Campagna, and also by Raphael's pursuit of the ideal.

[12] The 19th-century art historian Ralph Nicholson Wornum wrote that Raphael, in the Garvagh Madonna and in other works of his Roman period, had "exhibited a nearer approximation to perfection than any other painter".

Raphael painted a number of Madonnas which passed into that family; this Virgin and Child with Saint John may have been in the collection of Lucrezia d'Este (d. 1598), inventoried in 1592, which came to the Aldobrandini.