This small painting, intended for private devotion, was enthusiastically mentioned in Giorgio Vasari's Le Vite: "Beautiful to admire, by the hand of Correggio, in which Our Lady places a chemise over Baby Jesus.

"[1] Its provenance is mentioned by Vasari as entering Parma in the first half of the 1500s, brought by French knight Chevalier de Bayard, a client of Parmigianino and an art collector of the time.

Probably thanks to this approving mention, the work was appreciated by the bishop Federico Borromeo, who wished for a copy for his Milan collection and entrusted the task to an illuminator Gerolamo Marchesini.

Representing a young Mary, almost adolescent, that has just put down her sewing tools, Correggio places a religious story in the simple frame of everyday life.

The background, where there is a glimpse of Saint Joseph, can be compared to Northern European works, particularly an Dürer engraving that Correggio might have known, The Rest during the Flight to Egypt.