# Madonna Suckling the Infant Christ [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [GIAMPIETRINO]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on poplar panel, 65 x 48 cm ## Commentary This painting adopts one of the oldest iconographic images of the Virgin, the Virgo lactans, or nursing Madonna. Leonardo developed the motif in inventive <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/l/leonardo/09study/03nursin.html'\)" href="/html/l/leonardo/09study/03nursin.html">drawings,</a> as well as paintings, foremost among them the <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/l/leonardo/03/3litta.html'\)" href="/html/l/leonardo/03/3litta.html">Madonna Litta.</a> Giampietrino too was drawn to the theme of the child suckling at his mother's breast and it inspired him to paint it on more than one occasion at different moments in his career. In the nineteenth century the painting was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. ## Related artworks - [Ecce Homo]() - [Leda and her Children \(detail\)]() - [Leda and her Children]() - [Madonna and Child]() - [Madonna and Child]() - [Madonna and Child with St Elizabeth and the Infant St John the Baptist]() - [Madonna and Child with Sts Jerome and Michael]() - [Madonna with Child]() - [Repentant Mary Magdalene]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()