[1] The picture, first recorded in a 1588 receipt, hangs high over an arch on the main staircase.

[2] The Visitation was an event described by St Luke in the Bible's New Testament (Luke 1:39-45) when Mary, the expectant mother of Jesus Christ, visited her older relative Elizabeth and her husband, the old priest Zechariah.

Elizabeth, who although past child-bearing age, had also been blessed by God with a child, the future John the Baptist.

As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy".

Tintoretto had also painted the same event some thirty years previously, a c.1550 version which hangs in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.