as the mother of God. Many years later, on a sunny day holding her infant in the garden and with her toddler son playing at her knees, she was spotted by a handsome young man at her garden gate. That young man was Raphael Sanzio who immediately said he would like to paint her as she sat there with her two sons, later represented as the original Virgin, Christ child, and St. John. Because of the painting's roundness, it became the subject of another story in which a peasant girl saves a hermit from a pack of wolves in the branches of an oak, and the hermit prophesies that she will become immortalized for her good deed. Years later, the girl had two children, and the tree was made into wine barrels. Raphael happened upon the trio and used a barrel bottom to paint them. This scenario was the subject of an 1839 lithograph by August Hopfgarten and a painting by Johann Michael Wittmer. Ingres greatly admired Raphael and paid tribute to him by including this painting in many of his works, such as in the background of Henri IV playing with his children and Raphael and La Fornarina on the table in front of the subject in his Portrait of monsieur Rivière. The image was worked into the carpet in Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne. Johann Zoffany also included this painting along with many others in his 1770s painting of the Tribuna of the Uffizi. In 1858, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that the painting was "the most beautiful picture in the world" after having seen it via "a hundred engravings and copies". The depiction inspired Raphael Morghen and Niccolò De Antoni for a commission for Prince Consort for his Raphael Collection, which is conserved at the Royal Collection Trust. See also List of paintings by Raphael Madonna (art) References External links Exhibited 1880 Copy of The Madonna della Sedia. Paintings of the Madonna and Child by Raphael 1514 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Palatina Paintings depicting John the Baptist