Madonna col Bambino, santa Elisabetta e san Giovannino

Veronese made this holy family in Venice in the later 1560s, when he was one of the most sought-after painters in the city. It is a sacred subject dressed in Venetian luxury. The Virgin holds the Christ child while Saint Elizabeth, mother of the young John the Baptist, sits at the left rolling up swaddling cloth, an ordinary household task. At the right stands Saint Catherine in shining silks, looking less like a martyr than a Venetian noblewoman at a gathering. This was just the sort of worldly splendor that Counter-Reformation churchmen were beginning to frown on, and a few years later Veronese would be summoned before the Inquisition over another painting. The picture now hangs far from Venice, at the Timken Museum in San Diego.