Follower of Anton Van Dyck; 17th century.

Follower ANTON VAN DYCK (Antwerp, Belgium, 1599 - London, 1641); 17th century.
"The Infant Jesus and the Infant St. John the Baptist embracing".
Oil on panel.
It has a frame of c.1850 with restorations.
Measurements: 64 x 71 cm; 95 x 82 cm (frame).
The painting follows directly the model of The Christ Child and the Infant Saint John the Baptist Embracing, preserved in the collection of the National Trust (no. 836155), a work acquired in 1967 from Edward Ward, 7th Viscount Bangor, with a grant from the Ulster Land Fund. The existence of this reference confirms the wide dissemination of the subject and the critical fortune of the compositional model. The similarity of the two compositions indicates that this work is part of the production of a follower of Anton van Dyck. Made in oil on panel, the painting takes up an iconographic model of great diffusion in the European devotional sphere, centered on the affective and tender representation of the infancy of Christ and St. John the Baptist.
The composition shows both children in an attitude of embrace, underlining not only the family bond but also the prefiguration of the sacrificial destiny of Jesus, symbolically announced by the presence and gesture of the little Baptist. This type of scene was particularly cultivated in the Flemish and Italian environment of the 17th century, where religiosity was expressed through close and humanized images. From the stylistic point of view, the work shows the influence of Van Dyck's pictorial language: the softness in the modeling of the flesh tones, the delicacy in the hallmarks of light and the compositional elegance refer to the prototypes developed by the master in his Flemish period. However, certain formal features allow us to place it within the scope of a follower, who reinterpreted the model with his own variations, maintaining the devotional and aesthetic essence of the original.