Attributed to Bartholomeus Spranger

Attributed to BARTHOLOMEUS SPRANGER (Antwerp, 1546 - Prague, 1611).
"Holy Family".
Oil on copper.
It has a frame of bone and lapis lazuli with iron support.
Measurements: 30 x 24,5 cm; 37,5 x 31 cm (frame).
The Virgin and Child, St. Joseph, and St. John form a closed and intimate group in this baroque painting. Gestures and gestures converge towards the center of the scene where Jesus stands with an open book, pointing to one of the pages under the watchful eye of his cousin. The figure of St. Joseph is in the background, but even so, his monumentality reflects his relevance both in the image and in the biblical portrait. The light also has an intense effect on the maternity, so that the flesh tones of Mary and Jesus are almost pearly, while the other faces are more atheistic. The naturalism printed in the expressions and garments stands out: the aged skins of some, while others are characterized by their vivid freshness. Likewise, the fabrics combine the smoothness of silk with the roughness of coarse cloths. A whole play of qualities that increases the sumptuousness with which the author has immortalized this scene, to which he adds the presence of a procession of angels with colorful wings and garments. The scene abandons the manger of the biblical story to inhabit a classical architecture of great monumentality that harmonizes with the rotundity of the figures. Stylistically the work is close to the painting of Bartholomeus Spranger in fact there is a later engraving by Jan Sadeler I in which this same model of Bartholomeus Spranger is collected. Flemish painter, draughtsman, sculptor and engraver. He worked in Prague as court artist to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and responded to the aesthetic preferences of his patron by developing a version of the artistic style known as Northern Mannerism. Spranger's style, which combined elements of Netherlandish painting and Italian influences, particularly from the Roman Mannerists, exerted a great influence on other artists in Prague and elsewhere, especially in the Dutch Republic, as his paintings were widely disseminated through prints and artists who had worked with him, such as Karel van Mander.

In the most common sense of the expression, the Holy Family includes the closest relatives of the Child Jesus, i.e. 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 bond, certainly, but they do not constitute an indivisible block. Moreover, the three are represented in human form, while the dove of the Holy Spirit introduces into the divine Trinity a zoomorphic element that is 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.