Die Jungfrau mit Kind, dem heiligen Johannes dem Täufer und einem unbekannten Heiligen

This was painted in Venice around 1515, when Titian was still young and stepping into the space left by two older masters, Giorgione, dead of plague in 1510, and the aged Giovanni Bellini. It is a small picture, made for private prayer in a home rather than a church. The Virgin sits out in the open countryside with the Christ child, and the infant Saint John the Baptist points toward a lamb at the front, the old sign for Christ as the Lamb of God. What carries the picture is colour and warmth, the deep blue of Mary's robe answered by the blue of the far hills, the soft Venetian light on skin and cloth. Centuries later it hung in the celebrated Orleans collection in Paris, and today it is on long loan to the gallery in Edinburgh from a British family collection.