The baby Jesus sits on Mary's lap and makes a blessing gesture. In front of them we see Peter Martyr and the young John.
This picture was painted by Lorenzo Lotto. He took an idea from the workshop of his teacher Giovanni Bellini. Here you can see two pictures by two other students of Bellini. Both pictures show the typical posture of Mary: she has tilted her head, holds the child with her left hand and stretches her right arm far forward. The meaning of this gesture is different in each picture: In the picture by Lotto, Mary blesses little John with her right hand. In the other two pictures, Mary's hand is resting on a book.
In Bellini's workshop, popular images were painted again and again and slightly modified. In more than twenty paintings, Mary was used in the same pose as a model.