This painting dates from the beginning of the "Roman period" in Raphael's career, when the young artist had only just left Florence and arrived in the Vatican to work on the rooms in the papal residence. "The Alba Madonna is the most characteristic example of the artist's decorative searchings in easel painting… The skill with which the group has been inserted into the round shape is astonishing… This painting can be compared to a beautiful building in which everything is rhythm, some parts carry others, everything is strong and everything is filled with joy, because it accords with some requirements of harmony inherent in us," Alexander Benois wrote in his 1910 Guide to the Picture Gallery of the Imperial Hermitage.
The second name - Alba Madonna - came about because in the 17th and 18th centuries the painting was in the possession of the Dukes of Alba. In 1836 Raphael's work was bought for the Hermitage together with seven other paintings from the collection of Baron Coesvelt. The painting was sold in 1930-31 to the prominent American collector Andrew Mellon and now adorns the National Gallery in Washington.