Madonna and Child between St. Justina and St. George, with a Kneeling Benedictine Monk

Around 1554 Paolo Veronese was in his mid-twenties and still new to Venice, a painter from Verona making his name in a city crowded with older talent. This altarpiece was made for the Benedictine monks of San Giorgio Maggiore, whose island church sits across the water from the Doge's Palace. The saints are a message to that community. George is the soldier-saint the church is named for, and Justina of Padua was the patron of the Benedictine congregation the monastery belonged to. The monk kneeling at the Virgin's feet is one of those Benedictines, the donor, placed among the saints as if introduced to the Christ Child in person. Veronese fills the scene with the warm colour and easy grandeur that would make him one of the great decorators of Venice. More than a century later the painting left Venice for France, bought for Louis XIV in 1671, and it has hung in the royal collection and then the Louvre ever since.