La Vierge à l'Enfant avec sainte Dorothée et saint Georges

Titian was still a young man in Venice, not yet 30, when he painted this small devotional picture around 1515. It is a sacra conversazione, a 'holy conversation', with the Virgin and child flanked by Saint George in armour and Saint Dorothy holding flowers, gathered informally as if in one quiet room. The figures already carry the weight and warm light Titian would be famous for, so much so that for a while collectors credited the work to his older colleague Giorgione instead. Its later life was grand. It became the first painting by Titian to enter the collection of Philip the Second of Spain, who sent it to his palace-monastery of the Escorial in 1593. From there it passed to the Prado in Madrid.