Who painted the Sistine Madonna, with its two famous cherubs?

Raphael, around 1512 - and the two cherubs leaning on the frame at the bottom, chins on hands, bored, are among the most reproduced images in the world, on mugs, cards, wrapping paper and umbrellas, almost always cropped away from the painting they belong to.

They occupy perhaps a twentieth of the canvas. Above them is a vision: the Virgin walking towards the viewer on clouds, curtains drawn back, a saint pointing outward and another looking down. The cherubs are looking up at that, which is the composition's device - they are the audience within the picture, and the standard reproduction removes everything they are reacting to.

Their independent career began in the nineteenth century, when they were reproduced separately and became a sentimental fixture. It is one of the clearest examples of a detail escaping its work entirely: a great many people can picture them precisely and have no idea they are from an altarpiece, or that Raphael painted it, or that there is anything above them at all.