This beautiful painting was considered by Federico Borromeo "one of the dearest things I have" and it has been hypothesized that he kept it in his studio in the archbishop's palace, so much so that it became part of the Ambrosian collection only on his death. There have been long discussions on the authorship of the work, but recently it has been stated that "the definition of an autograph replica for the Milanese example is the most suitable". An identical painting, probably the original version seen by Federico Borromeo, is kept in the Prado Museum in Madrid and was donated in 1605 to the Queen of Spain Margaret of Austria by Francesco Maria Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. From the iconographic point of view, it is interesting to note that the painting totally lacks any source of natural or artificial light, since everything is flooded by the divine light that radiates from the face of the Child Jesus, as indeed narrated in one of the apocryphal gospels.