The Holy Family with Elizabeth and the Infant St John

Author: Klazina Botke

The Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Franco, also known by his nickname Il Semolei, worked in Rome for many years, where he focused primarily on copying works by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and making drawings of antiquities.^[1] In addition to his skills as a draughtsman, Franco was also a proficient printmaker and he often made etchings or engravings based on his own designs. In 1536 he became an employee of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574) in Florence. While maintaining his contacts in Rome, in the second half of the 1540s he worked mainly for Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere (1514-1574) in Urbino, executing commissions for the cathedral and producing designs for majolica. He became famous during his lifetime for his lively and refined drawing style.

This drawing reflects subtleness and self-confidence in equal measure with flowing lines in pen and light brown ink, Franco’s favourite technique. Felton Gibbons gave high praise to the delicate execution and lightness of the composition, with soft, intertwined round lines that are characteristic of Franco’s work.^[2] The same delicate style can be seen in a drawing in Princeton dated at between 1552 and 1555 which, like our drawing, came from the collection of Count Moritz van Fries (1777-1826).^[3] However, Anne Varick Lauder dates the Rotterdam drawing somewhat earlier in Franco’s career, around the end of the 1530s, when the artist was still working in Florence.^[4]

According to Lauder, the study is one of ten drawings and two engravings that Franco produced with compositions of the Holy Family and the infant John the Baptist. Some of the sheets are now in Paris, Oxford and Vienna.^[5] In our study, we see the Virgin with the Christ Child, with Joseph and St Elizabeth behind her and the infant John front left. The Virgin is busy wrapping Christ tenderly in a piece of drapery while John reaches out his hands trying to grab the fabric. The motif of the cloth being held up also features in Franco’s drawings in Paris.^[6] A fallen chapiter lies in the foreground as a symbol of the renaissance of classical antiquity as well as the relationship between classical antiquity and Christianity; the birth of Christ heralded the end of classical antiquity and a new age dawned.^[7] The addition of this detail probably arose in part from Franco’s great interest in antiquities during his stay in Rome.