A discovery of the birth register of the children of Jacopo Palma il Giovane, combined with numerous surviving drawings representing their likenesses, has provided an opportunity for a reassessment of the painter’s familial relationships and an occasion to reflect on the interactions between his private life and the artistic occupation as a painter. A sort of an ‘intimate journal’, encompassing numerous likenesses of his wife and friends, reveals Jacopo’s talent for drawings from life, quite unlike his works on canvas in which he seems to have followed a late Mannerist idiom. Witnesses to the baptisms, for instance: Alessandro Vittoria, Girolamo Cappello and Marco Querini, or some strange personages, as for example Antonio Tasca, were usually his clients or patrons, important figures on the political scene, who at times had also played a significant part in Jacopo’s career.