Madonna mit Kind und den Heiligen Stephanus, Hieronymus und Mauritius

This is early Titian, painted in Venice while he was still emerging from the shadow of his teacher Giovanni Bellini and his older colleague Giorgione, who had died young of plague in 1510. The Virgin sits with the Christ child among three saints a Venetian would have read at a glance: Stephen with the stones of his martyrdom, Jerome the scholar, and Maurice the soldier. It is the kind of quiet, grouped holy gathering the Venetians loved, warmed by the soft colour Titian was already making his own. Centuries later the picture entered the French royal collection under Louis XIV, which is how a Venetian altar image ended up on the walls of the Louvre.