Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist


I figured since that since the Mona Lisa nomination below isn't likely to go through below, I should try my hand with one which may; the main motivator being that I believe there are too few featured artworks on Wikipedia so far.

This is another Da Vinci. I don't think I need to argue for quality or significance of the painting. To my eye the scan seems fine; I corrected the colours so it's more vivid than the original ARC version. The detail is such that individual charcoal strokes are visible. There are different levels of "completeness" — it appears the cartoon wasn't finished as the outlines are unpricked — hence Leonardo's creative processes are to a small extent transparent.

It appears in articles as a fantastic example of a Cartoon, and of course as itself in The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist.


 * Nominate and Support Leon 11:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Support very high quality scan --Bridgecross 14:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment though it's tough to tell, there seems to be some actual image grain (not just a side-effect of ancient parchment and charcoal) and the image might look better with it downsampled a bit --⁪froth T C  14:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Neutral for now - per froth. The noise seems to have an exact 1 pixel frequency - so I'm guessing its actually a scan moire of some sort. I think a 50-70% downsample would get rid of it fully, and then I would support. Debivort 16:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * weak support less frothy edit1, per froth. This was a bit of a tough decision - I felt there was still some scan noise, but as has been pointed out, it could be in the original. Furthermore, the nomination suffers from the problem of being too high resolution - like many nominations in which people complain that the original 4k x 4k image is "blurry" when they wouldn't complain at all about a 1k x 1k downsampled version. If this one was down sampled even more agressively to barely meet the min resolution requirements, I think it would pass with flying colors. I don't think it should be downsampled further though - I think it's best to pass a nominee with as much resolution as possible, and it looks like this one will pass. Debivort 04:59, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Support Both Versions Bother versions are FP quality. Sharkface217 01:17, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * oppose the grain is really distracting on both versions, seems like the image is a scan from a copy. → Aza Toth 22:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment This is from a total non-expert, but I think the fact that it's charcoal and chalk contributes to the sense of graininess. Leon 12:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Support Don't forget the original drawing is decaying and itself seems grainy. But I remember the colors being far less luminous?. Maybe use a very faded smart blur and desaturate a little? --JonM 02:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Support downsampled. It's good enough now, barely --⁪froth T C  03:54, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Raven4x4x 01:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)