The Holy Family with Saint Catherine, Saint Sebastian and a Donor

This panel has passed through the hands of an English diplomat, two kings and a banker. Sebastiano painted it as a young man in Venice, and most scholars put it around 1507 or 1508. It shows the Holy Family with Saint Catherine, Saint Sebastian and a donor whose name is not known, gathered side by side in the wide format Venetian painters liked for these quiet sacred groups. Sir Francis Cottington, the English ambassador, acquired it in Spain, and by 1627 it belonged to King Charles I. After Charles was executed in 1649 and his pictures were sold off, it passed through a London collection to Everhard Jabach, a Cologne-born banker in Paris, who sold it to Louis XIV in 1662. Today it hangs in the Louvre's Salle des États, the room that holds the Mona Lisa.