The Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist

Although never a formal pupil of Titian, Polidoro da Lanciano drew much of his inspiration from the older master, and his works are often listed with that attribution. Indeed, in the 19th century, the present work was thought to have been painted by Titian himself. In the 1540s, Polidoro was influenced by the ornamental style of Bonifazio de' Pitati --who had adapted the style pioneered by his contemporary Palma Vecchio--and towards the end of his career, in the 1550s and 1560s - by the decorative classicism of Veronese. His oeuvre is characterized by works like the present Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, likely executed for private devotion, in which delicately rendered, informally-posed figures are set before an expansive mountainous vista or wooded landscape. As the number of such extant pictures suggests, Polidoro's religious works clearly enjoyed a significant degree of popularity in 16th-century Venice. Indeed, Polidoro is described in Lodovico Dolce's Dialogue on Painting, which first appeared in Venice in 1557, as among the twelve outstanding painters in Italy.