Follower of Raphael de Sanzio

Follower of RAFAEL DE SANZIO (Urbino, Italy, 1483 - Rome, 1520).
"Holy Family".
Oil on panel.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 24 x 33,5 cm.
The present work follows the compositional model spread by The Holy Family with St. John (No. P000168) by Luca Giordano, painting in which the Neapolitan master tried a conscious approach to the ways of Raphael. Currently in the collection of the Museo del Prado. In this typology, the Virgin, the Child and Saint John the Baptist are arranged in a pyramidal scheme of classicist roots, with delicate affective interactions between the figures and a serene construction of space, evocative of the Renaissance ideal. Giordano, an attentive student of Raphael, developed on several occasions a strategy of imitation that combined the literal assimilation of models with the incorporation of elements from his own baroque vocabulary and the contemporary Neapolitan environment. In the version preserved in the Museo del Prado, the painter even included an apocryphal monogram: "RSF VB" (Raphael Sanzio Faciebat Vrbinas) on a rock, a gesture that has sparked debate about a possible desire to pass the work off as an original by the master of Urbino or, more likely, to exhibit a scholarly virtuosity capable of dialoguing with tradition.The fundamental model comes from Raphael's Madonna of Loreto, from which Giordano literally took certain compositional and typological elements. Everything indicates that the Neapolitan had first-hand knowledge of the original, since the prints that were widespread at the time had significant alterations that are not reflected in his painting.
The painting catalogued here, derived from that model, testifies to the extraordinary popularity of Raphaelesque classicism in the Neapolitan Baroque and the ability of its artists to reinterpret it in a contemporary key. The softness of the types, the idealization of the anatomies and the balanced arrangement of the figures reveal the persistence of the Renaissance ideal, while the chromatic warmth and the luminous vibration hint at the fully Baroque sensibility that characterizes Giordano's environment.