Italian school; 17th century.

Italian school; XVII century.
"Holy family".
Oil on canvas. relined.
Measurements: 50,5 x 40 cm; 68 x 57 cm (frame).
In the present work we are presented in an intimate way to the Virgin breastfeeding the Child while St. Joseph, leaning on a table, contemplates the scene. It is an intimate moment that opens up to the spectator, making him a participant. A placid and almost idyllic scene in which a window bursts in the left side that brings us to the earthly world letting us see the blue sky.
The representation and model of the Holy Family has served as an image that reinforces the family portrait and the moral representation of the Christian family. The different variants that have come down to us from the history of art have been due to the political and religious needs of the moment. In the Italian Renaissance period for art, but late medieval in terms of society, the iconography of the Holy Family was based predominantly on the Virgin, Child and St. Anne, especially in the Tuscan area, because the mother of the Virgin was the patron saint of the city of Florence. The figure of St. Joseph, although he is not usually represented in the iconography of this theme, or if he does it is in a more restrained and almost secondary way, it is during the seventeenth century that his figure as earthly father of the Child takes more relevance in the scenes where his paternal and protective role is more palpable and even, sometimes, protagonist. This is due to the thought that the Church throughout history has had about him, whose interest in the figure of St. Joseph was reconsidered as new beliefs were reworked, adding to it the development of bourgeois society.