The two cherubs at the bottom of Raphael's Sistine Madonna became famous because they could be cut out. Raphael painted them beneath the Virgin in an altarpiece ordered in 1512, and by the early 1800s they were turning up alone on almanacs and armbands. A century later they were everywhere without her, on postcards, wrapping paper, stamps and mugs.
The altarpiece itself is a vision. Mary steps out of the clouds toward the viewer with the infant Christ in her arms, a green curtain drawn back on each side, two saints kneeling at her feet. The cherubs lean on a ledge below her with their chins on their folded arms, looking up. They are the only figures in the picture who do nothing.
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The odd part is that Raphael never planned them. The painting's entry on Google Arts & Culture says he added the two children late in the work, mostly for the sake of the composition, and Maclean's, covering the Dresden gallery's anniversary show in 2012, simply called them an afterthought.
The Virgin, the pope and the saint were planned first. The two children on the ledge came last. So the most copied figures in the altarpiece were the last thing it asked for, and the people who own the mug have mostly forgotten the picture around them.
What You'll Discover
Why Raphael added them last.
Where the other angels hide.
What they are waiting for.
Who posed for them.
How they got out of the frame.