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Notice the round frame painted inside the square canvas, then the mother’s and child’s cheeks pressed together.
West revered the Renaissance master Raphael and gave his eldest son the painter’s name. In this tender portrait of his wife, Elizabeth, holding the infant Raphael, born in 1769, he modeled the pose on Raphael’s famous Madonna of the Chair. West had been the first American painter to train in Italy, spending three years there before he made his home in London.
oil on canvas · Framed: 88 x 87.5 x 9 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Elizabeth Shewell West and Her Son, Raphael
- Artist
- Benjamin West (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1738–1820)
- Date
- c. 1770
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 88 x 87.5 x 9 cm (34 5/8 x 34 7/16 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 66.5 x 66.3 cm (26 3/16 x 26 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- The Charles W. Harkness Gift
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.