Vierge Sciarra

By around 1540 Titian was the most sought-after painter in Europe, running a busy Venice workshop that turned out portraits for princes and tender Madonnas for private prayer. This is one of the intimate ones, the Virgin holding the Christ child close for a household altar rather than a church wall. It carries the signature TITIANVS, though scholars have long argued over how much of it is by the master's own hand and how much by his shop. Its name comes from the Sciarra family of Rome, in whose palace it hung for centuries before it passed through English hands into the Thyssen collection. Today it is shown in Barcelona, on deposit at the national museum of Catalonia.