San Giuseppe con Gesù Bambino e i santi Francesco di Paola, Anna, Antonio e Pietro d'Alcántara

The multi-saint altarpiece of Saints Joseph, Francis of Paola, Anne, Anthony, and Peter of Alcántara with the Christ Child, painted around 1733 and now at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, is a devotional assembly of popular Catholic saints gathered around the central figure of the infant Jesus. Such composite saint pictures allowed different devotional communities — Franciscan, Augustinian, family devotion to Saint Anne — to find their patron within a single unified image, maximizing the work's appeal to diverse institutional or private patrons. Francis of Paola, the fifteenth-century Calabrian hermit whose Minim order was popular in southern Italy and Spain, and Peter of Alcántara, the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who reformed the Franciscan observance, both represent the continuation of radical ascetic spirituality within the institutional church.

The painting showcases Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's airy compositions, with dramatic foreshortening lending the work its distinctive character. The palette and brushwork are calibrated to serve the subject matter, demonstrating the technical command expected of a work from this period.