Delightful oil on canvas painting depicting Baby Jesus delicately holding a small cross in his right hand while, with his left hand, he supports a small basket containing the symbols of the Passion. The author of this painting can be identified as Giuseppe Angeli, the most gifted of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta's pupils, so much so that he is documented as the director of his very active workshop. From the master, Angeli draws that chromatic luminosity, omitting the pathetic components, exhibiting a soft texture and a pastosity of color tuned on delicate chords, silvery pinks, deep blues and soft grays, with a sensual and suggestive language. Visible are the updates drawn from the art of Rosalba Carriera and Jacopo Amigoni which will connote the mature production of the artist, who, with 1757, will assume the role of master of the nude at the Academy. These are the years to which the execution of this beautiful canvas refers. The subject portrayed here represents a model used several times by our painter since his first attempts; recognizable, for example, in the altarpiece with the Blessed Gerolamo Miani and some orphaned children praying around the crucifix of the Venetian church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti and dell'Ospedaletto and in the painting with Girls Tickling a Sleeping Boy, published by Egidio Martini in 1981. Reference bibliography: E. Martini, La Pittura del Settecento veneto, Udine, 1981, fig. 308 T. Pignatti, Giuseppe Angeli, catalog of the exhibition Giambattista Piazzetta e il suo tempo, la sua scuola, Venice, 1983, ad vocem R. Pallucchini in La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Settecento, Milan 1996, II, pp. 161 - 162, fig. 227 Measure cm. 47x38 (cm.62x52.5 with frame)