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Along with three other pictures for devotional purposes (the Marriage Feast at Cana, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Road to Calvary), this painting originally formed part of the furnishings of the Palazzo Coccina (now Palazzo Papadopoli) on the Grand Canal in Venice. After Charles I of England had fruitlessly tried to obtain them in 1644, the pairs of pictures passed in 1645 to Francesco I d'Este in Modena. In 1746, his descendant Francesco III sold them to Augustus III, King of Saxony.
Veronese places the episodes from the Gospels in a setting of great narrative richness, in which the figures, in modern dress, perform like actors on a stage. In the Adoration of the Virgin by the Coccina Family, it is the members of the family who take part in this sort of play. It is staged in Venice, as is clearly apparent from the presence, in the background on the right, of the family palace on the Grand Canal four which the four large canvases were painted.
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