库奇纳家族的圣母

Around 1571 the Cuccina, a family of rich Venetian cloth merchants, commissioned four huge paintings from Veronese for their palace on the Grand Canal. Three showed scenes from the life of Christ. This fourth one shows the family itself, kneeling in their best clothes as the Virgin and Child receive them, with John the Baptist and Saint Jerome standing by and three allegorical women of Faith, Hope and Charity leading them forward. Behind the figures Veronese set their real house on the canal, so their earthly address and their hoped-for place in heaven share one frame. Nearly two centuries later, in 1746, the whole set was bought for the art-hungry court of Augustus III of Saxony, which is how a private Venetian family portrait ended up on the walls in Dresden.