The Holy Family

Sofonisba Anguissola's painting titled The Holy Family with Saints Anne and John the Baptist (1592) is an unusual example of a narrative religious painting by a master who usually painted portraits. The work, which is oil on canvas and measures 49.5" x 43.5", is in the collection of the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. The painting, which is signed and dated, reflects Counter-Reformation painters' interest in devotional images that made a very direct emotional appeal to the viewer. Anguissola adapted the composition from the work of another painter, her friend Luca Cambiaso, but her version shows an interest in sfumato and warmth of presentation that recalls the earlier Renaissance painters rather than the harsher realism that appealed to many Counter-Reformation artists, such as Cambiaso.

Anguissola (c. 1535-1625) lived in an age when very few women were trained as painters. She had the good fortune to be one of the six daughters of Amilcare Anguissola, a nobleman of Cremona whose Humanist associates were convinced that the education of women was a good idea. The painter and her sisters (two of whom became painters as well) received a sound Humanist education and Sofonisba and Elena, the eldest two, were sent to the workshop of a local painter, Bernardino Campi, for their training. In an age when a very young and talented girl who could paint was regarded as a phenomenon her "manager-father" initially promoted his daughter "as a sensation." But Sofonisb

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he two painters involved. The painting was copied from a lost version of the same subject by Cambiaso. This is known because copies of the picture by other painters exist and identify Cambiaso as the original author of the composition. Cambiaso was one of the Counter-Reformation painters who employed the so-called "new objectivity," in which the sacred events were painted in convincing, realistic detail. The originals of other narrative religious paintings by Anguissola are also known. And, in creating her own versions of these works, she favored a gentler, less hard-edged style. Her own "soft technique" was applied to "pleasing devotional motifs and scenes from the life of the Christ Child." On the one hand, Cambiaso, striving for realism, would have presented a logical group of people since this was intended to be a scene representing something that had actually taken place. He would not, therefore, be likely to show the very young John without his mother. On the other hand, Anguissola, who was interested in domestic scenes also would not have been likely to separate the little child from his mother. For either painter, of course, the repetition of the mother-and-son motif in Mary-Jesus and Elizabeth-John would also

Category: Arts - T