The Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist with a Lamb

Scenes showing the infants Jesus and John together first became popular in fifteenth-century Tuscany, part of a growing concern for childhood. The subject was given new life in the century to follow thanks to a now lost work by Leonardo, which showed the two children embracing. Luini, inspired by Leonardo's example, chose to show them together with a lamb, symbol of Jesus' sacrifice and death. The naturalism of the scene offsets the weighty meaning - these are not symbols, but two young boys at play.