The Holy Family with the boy John

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The Holy Family with the Johannesknaben (Michelangelo or close circle)
The Holy Family with the boy John
Michelangelo or close circle , around 1540
Brown brush wash on poplar wood
62 × 49.5 cm
Ashmolean Museum

The Holy Family with the Boy John is a painting that was created in close proximity to Michelangelo Buonarroti or was possibly painted by himself.

Image data

The picture was created around 1540. It is a brown brush wash on poplar wood in the format 62 cm × 49.5 cm. The drawing is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford under the inv.no .: A 66 C. This museum acquired the picture in 1846.

description

The unfinished picture, laid out only in the outer outlines, shows a striding Maria , who leads the Christ Child , who is running at her feet, on a walking aid, while with the other hand she holds the boy John walking next to her . You can see Joseph bent over the Christ child , who gives him additional support while learning to walk. The depiction could be a return of the Holy Family from Egypt .

The figures and the composition are close to Michelangelo, to whom the picture was previously assigned. The researchers later distanced themselves from the work, if they took notice of it at all, and considered it to be a possible copy based on a lost original draft by Michelangelo from the 1640s. Recently, however, there has been another rethink, as the unfinished state and the panel, which has only been insufficiently prepared for a painting, are completely atypical features for a later copy. In addition, the drawing is of unusually high quality, so that an attribution to Michelangelo himself is being considered again.

The picture was successively in the Royal Collection in Naples before it came into the possession of William Young Ottley and then of the painter Sir Thomas Lawrence . In 1846 the picture came to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

literature

  • Christopher H. Lloyd: Catalog of the Earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977, ISBN 0-19-817342-3 .
  • Kenneth J. Garlick and GL Tayor: Catalog of Painting in the Ashmolean Museum. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1980, ISBN 0-90009-021-9 .
  • Summary Catalog of Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum. Self-published, Oxford 1995, ISBN 1-85444-187-6 (hardcover), ISBN 1-85444-188-4 (softcover).

Web links