Doni offered the original seventy; but Michael Angelo replied that if he was bent on bargaining, he should not pay less than one hundred and forty.

In this composition the Madonna is seated upon the ground, forming a pyramid, of which the heads of Joseph and the Child form the apex; her lithe and strong form has a Greek loveliness as she turns quickly and receives the beautiful Child on to her shoulder from the arms of Joseph.

Never in any painting have the drawing and modelling of the human figure been so perfectly executed as in the figure of this Child and the arms of the Madonna; the hands and feet are modelled with the delicacy of a Flemish miniature, and at the same time have a beauty and suavity of modelling and a magnificent choice of line altogether Italian.

On either side of the central triangle the spaces between it and the circumference of the tondo are filled by the introduction of the infant St.John and some nude shepherds; the landscape background is austere as the mountain tops of some primeval world where such titanic beings as these of Michael Angelo's alone could dwell.

The old painters loved to decorate their Madonna pictures with all the most beautiful things they could think of, or most loved.