The Holy Family with the young St John the Baptist and St George

At the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, this Holy Family with the Young Baptist and Saint George (c. 1558) joins a devotional grouping with an unusual knight-saint inclusion. Saint George — the dragon-slaying soldier-martyr — was Venice's patron saint, making his presence in Venetian devotional painting politically as well as spiritually resonant: the warrior who defended the weak stood as a model for the Republic that styled itself the defender of Christendom against the Ottoman East. The Ashmolean, founded in 1683 as the world's first university museum, assembled its Italian paintings through donations and bequests over centuries. This small panel (41 × 50 cm) suggests a private devotional work, an altarello for domestic use rather than a public commission, giving it an intimacy quite different from Veronese's grand altarpieces. The combination of the Baptist and George alongside the Holy Family was not unusual in Venetian devotional art, where patrons selected saints according to personal devotion, civic identity, or the names of family members requiring heavenly intercession.

Veronese's cool, silvery palette unifies the diverse group of sacred and martial figures. The armor of Saint George provides a contrasting texture to the soft draperies of the other figures, rendered with the metallic precision that Veronese brought to all his depictions of armored figures.