Italian school; 17th century.

Italian school; XVII century.
"Holy Family".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents faults and restorations.
Measurements: 76 x 109 cm.
In this work the artist has made the representation of the Holy Family, following the sweet and naturalistic ways typical of the Italian school. We see Mary and the Child in the center of the composition, and next to them the figure of San Juanito, located in the foreground. The scene is completed by St. Elizabeth and Zechariah. The way in which the author composes the triangle formed by the Virgin, the Child and St. John follows the model of La Madonna con il bambino e san Giovannino by Titian, currently in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery. In both cases we see the Virgin holding the Infant Jesus, who tenderly brings his face close to that of his mother. Next to them, St. John bends down to caress Jesus' right foot and carries a scroll wrapped around his arm with the inscription "Ecce Agnus Dei" ("Behold the Lamb of God"), alluding to Christ's sacrifice on the cross. A double circle of cherubs attends the scene and animates the background of the work. Other paintings traditionally attributed to Titian and very similar iconographically to ours are known: one of them is preserved since the mid-eighteenth century in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, another was in the Palazzo Grimani in the same city, and another is preserved in St. Petersburg.
It is precisely the presence of these variants of these other paintings, very similar to the one in the Uffizi, which has led to the reasonable assumption that there was an original prototype by the hand of Titian, from which all the other paintings produced in his workshop would descend.
In the most common sense of the expression, the Holy Family includes the closest relatives of the Child Jesus, that is, mother and grandmother or mother and nurturing father. In both cases, whether it is St. Anne or St. Joseph who appears, it is a group of three figures. From the artistic point of view, the arrangement of this terrestrial Trinity poses the same problems and suggests the same solutions as the heavenly Trinity. However, the difficulties are fewer. It is no longer a question of a single God in three persons whose essential unity must be expressed at the same time as diversity. The three personages are united by a blood tie, certainly, but they do not constitute an indivisible block. Moreover, all three are represented in human form, while the dove of the Holy Spirit introduces into the divine Trinity a zoomorphic element difficult to amalgamate with two anthropomorphic figures. On the other hand, this iconography was traditionally, until the Counter-Reformation, a representation of the Virgin and Child to which the figure of St. Joseph was added in the foreground. It was not until the reforms of Trent when St. Joseph began to take center stage as protector and guide of the Infant Jesus.