Madonna and Child with Saint Catherine

This Madonna comes out of Titian's workshop in Venice, one of the busiest painting operations in 16th-century Europe. Titian had so many commissions that his shop turned out devotional pictures like this one to designs he had already worked out, with assistants carrying much of the labor. The Virgin holds the Christ Child while Saint Catherine of Alexandria kneels close by, an arrangement Titian used in his own paintings and that the shop then repeated for patrons who wanted a Titian to pray before at home. The catalogue places this version around 1600, which sets it after Titian himself had died in 1576, when former assistants and followers kept his manner alive in the city. The warm color and the soft, loose handling are the Venetian habits the workshop was known for. The same composition survives with Mary Magdalene in Catherine's place, a sign of how one successful design was varied to order.