Madonna and Child with Saint Agnes and Saint John the Baptist

By the 1530s Titian ran the busiest workshop in Venice, and a tender devotional group like this one was exactly the kind of picture that got repeated. He kept the design and let assistants make variants from it, and near-relatives of this Madonna now hang in Florence and in Fort Worth, Texas. Here the young Saint Agnes kneels close and the infant Christ leans toward her, while the little John the Baptist waits at the side. Agnes carries the lamb that is her usual attribute, a play on her name, which echoes the Latin word for lamb. The soft warm colour and loose handling are the marks of Titian's Venice, where oil on canvas had largely replaced the older wooden panels.