A prominent element within the painting, the winged angels beneath Mary are famous in their own right. The angels of this nature are known as putti, and are commonly conflated with (and erroneously referred to as) cherubim. As early as 1913 Gustav Kobbé declared that "no cherub or group of cherubs is so famous as the two that lean on the altar top indicated at the very bottom of the picture." These putti have inspired legends of their own. According to a 1912 article in Fra Magazine, when Raphael was painting the Madonna the children of his model would come in to watch. Struck by their posture as they did, the story goes, he added them to the painting exactly as he saw them. Another story, recounted in 1912's St. Nicholas Magazine, says that Raphael rather was inspired by two children he encountered on the street when he saw them "looking wistfully into the window of a baker's shop."
A putto (plural putti) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism, the putto came to represent the sacred cherub (plural cherubim), and in Baroque art the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God.
A putto representing a cupid is also called an amorino (plural amorini) or amoretto (plural amoretti).