Ferdinando II, Vittoria della Rovere and Cosimo III as the Holy Family

The Virgin here is Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. The Christ Child is her son Cosimo III, and Saint Joseph wears the face of her husband, Grand Duke Ferdinando II, whose title is written in cursive on the back of the canvas. The picture was ordered in 1728 by Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Electress Palatine, which is to say by the daughter of the infant painted here. She had come home to Florence widowed and childless, her brother Gian Gastone ruled without an heir, and the family was closing on the two of them. It hung in her apartment at Palazzo Pitti, where an inventory still records it in 1761. In 1737, the year Gian Gastone died and the line ran out, she signed the pact that tied the Medici collections to Florence for good. The canvas is in the Palatina's storerooms.