The Virgin Mary, seated in a pile of straw, nestles the Infant Jesus against her side, his little hand tenderly resting on her index finger. With her other hand, she raises the gauzy end of the child’s swaddling cloth. This canvas belongs to a group of paintings of the Virgin and Child produced in the 1570s in the studio of Tintoretto, one of the leading painters of sixteenth-century Venice. In this example, passages of loose brushwork—particularly in the Virgin’s veil—and the use of strong contours are hallmarks of Tintoretto’s technique.