Flemish school; late 17th century.

Flemish school following models of PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen, Germany, 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 1640); end of the XVII century
"Holy Family with St. John and Lamb".
Oil on canvas.
It presents restorations on the pictorial surface and patches on the back.
Measurements: 112 x 191 cm; 128 x 168 cm (frame).
The way in which a small angel offers grapes to the Virgin in this painting, is very reminiscent of the type of composition used by Rubens in his work "Holy Family with St. Francis", also the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia has a work very similar to the present one in terms of the arrangement of the character attributed to the workshop of Rubens (No. BF849). The influence of Rubens is evident in the characterization of the figures and in the canons of generous forms, the plump nudes of the infants and tactile flesh tones. Also the rich palette with which the green and blue shades of the bucolic landscape are contrasted against the emphatic red and blue cloaks and tunics, as well as the white cloth of the child, shows the teaching of the Flemish master.
Peter Paul Rubens was a painter of the Flemish school who, however, competed on equal terms with contemporary Italian artists, and enjoyed a very important international importance, since his influence was also key in other schools, as is the case of the transition to full baroque in Spain. Although born in Westphalia, Rubens grew up in Antwerp, where his family originated.Rubens had three teachers, the first being Tobias Verhaecht, a painter of precise and meticulous technique who had traveled to Italy, and who instilled in the young painter the first artistic rudiments. It is also possible that Rubens traveled to Italy influenced by this first master. The second was Adam van Noort, a Romanist painter also oriented towards the Italian influence, with a language still Mannerist, and who must also have influenced the young man to visit Italy. Finally, his third teacher was Otto van Veen, the most outstanding and the last of them. After his training, Rubens joined the Antwerp painters' guild in 1598. Only two years later he made a trip to Italy, where he remained between 1600 and 1608, and in 1609 he returned to the Netherlands, in the service of the governors of Flanders, Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. In addition to being a chamber painter, Rubens will exercise diplomatic tasks for the court that will take him to visit Spain, London and Paris. In 1609 he married Isabel Brant in Antwerp and organized his workshop, hiring excellent collaborators, with whom he worked side by side, many of them being specialist painters (Frans Snyders, Jan Brueghel de Velours...). He will also welcome disciples and will create an excellent workshop of engravers, who will work from drawings of his own hand, and under his supervision.