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An extremely valuable work is housed in Santa Maria del Giglio: a Virgin and Child with the Infant St John by Rubens, the only painting by this artist in Venice. The central section on paper is by Rubens, and this is fixed onto canvas and connect- ed to a generic background comprising a tree and curtain hanging on the right, by a late seventeenth-century painter probably from the Veneto.
Despite its critical vicissitudes over the centuries, there is no lack of elements substantiating the author of the painting and its very high quality: the brilliant quality of the afresh tones, especially in the children; the emotional intensity of the looks; the material richness and the expert technique evident in the several tones of Titian-style red on which the chromatic distribution of the entire fragment is based. Deep layers of solid and glazed lacquer are superimposed, often tone on tone and finely touched, from the clothes of the Virgin shaded in the grey filaments and earth green of the veil falling on her neck, to the profiles and extremely tender tips of the two children's fingers, heightened in white with the tip of the brush. Then there is the skillful painting of the Virgin's ear and of every other element in the work; the power of invention and of colour evident in the small patch of sky; the effect of shaping on form, seen in the facial features and breast of the Virgin, portrayed to great plastic effect, and partly the entire placement of the figures and overall composition, sensitive to the lessons of Caravaggio.
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