Madonnas of Lenningrad

In the section titled, The Tour, the guide describes a painting in the Rubens Room, the subject of which is a man (muscular body, ugly tortured head) being breastfed by his daughter (beautiful, plump, young). The guide comments that Rubens insisted that it was a painting about love. The guide also comments that he wasn't referring to the "decorous love or amorous passion" that a viewer might be accustomed to, but the "raw and wretched and demeaning" nature of physical existence that no "abstract notion about love" can overcome.

In Part 11, The Past, as Marina is describing one particular Raphael Madonna, she begins to see a ghostly image behind the one she's talking about, one perhaps painted over by the artist, and as the back image becomes clearer, she realizes it's the one described to her by Anya as having been taken early in the war (Chapter 7). At the conclusion of the tour, the captain is weeping as he looks into an empty frame, commenting that he has never seen anything so beautiful. Narration comments that he is looking at a Madonna.