Nativity of Jesus with St. Elisabeth and the Young St. John the Baptist, 1512 - 1513

The picture was probably executed around 1512-1513, during the artist’s stay in Mantua, but we do not know for where or for whom it was painted. In the 17th century it belonged to the prestigious Roman collection of Cardinal Ludovisi, but then returned to the antique market and finally resurfaced in the collection of Benigno Crespi, sold at auction in Paris in 1913: it was on that occasion that the panel made its entrance into the Pinacoteca.
It is a work dense in references to the great masters of the previous generation, such as Mantegna and Leonardo da Vinci – whose mellow chiaroscuro is adopted – but is also influenced by contemporary painters like Dosso Dossi and his compatriots Lorenzo Costa and Garofalo, from whom Correggio has taken the scheme of composition and the soft and sentimental tone of the figure of the Virgin.