Sacra Famiglia con san Giovanni Battista

Lorenzo Lotto worked his whole life in the shadow of Titian, never quite winning the Venice market, and this painting carries that story in miniature. He made it around 1536, probably for a private patron who, for reasons now lost, never took it. So it stayed with him. We know this because Lotto kept meticulous account books, and they record him still trying to offload the picture years later. He asked his friend, the sculptor Sansovino, to sell it for him. Sansovino couldn't, and sent it back. In 1550, by then in Ancona and short of money, Lotto put it up at a public auction, where it failed to sell too. The one buyer he could never find has been replaced by millions, for the unsold picture now hangs in the Louvre.