The Holy Family with St John the Baptist

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

This drawing is a copy after Andrea del Sarto’s painting The Holy Family with St John the Baptist (c.1520), a work now hanging in the Galleria Palatina in Florence (fig.).^[1] Domela Nieuwenhuis gave the drawing to Museum Boymans in 1923, together with another copy after the painting (inv. DN 119/16).^[2] It is clear from the many contemporary copies of Del Sarto’s work that the artist was very popular in sixteenth-century Florence. The Holy Family is one of Del Sarto’s most copied paintings, which is remarkable, given that the work was painted for the private apartments of the Florentine merchant Zanobi di Giovambattista Bracci (1488-1531 or later).^[3] This means that the painting was not accessible to the public at the time, but in making their copies artists probably used preliminary studies and cartoons that Del Sarto had made in preparation for The Holy Family.^[4] This copying of paintings could have been done for different reasons. In the case of the Rotterdam drawing it was probably an exercise for a young artist.

Interestingly, this drawing is a less exact copy of the original than our other sheet. The sleeping Joseph positioned behind the kneeling Virgin, John the Baptist and Christ in the painting is missing here. Where Joseph should be standing, upper left on the sheet, there are light pen strokes and outlines that could perhaps indicate that the drawing was unfinished. The figures’ hands and feet, for instance the Christ Child’s right foot, are hardly worked out at all. It is also striking that the maker of the drawing covered Christ’s and John the Baptist’s genitals, an addition that became increasingly common after the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563, because the Catholic Church regarded nudity in works of art as shameful.^[5] The drawing also lacks the naturalistic qualities for which Del Sarto was so celebrated. Whereas the Virgin and the Christ Child gaze lovingly at each other in the painting, there is no such interaction in the drawing; the figures here look past one another.

Oberhuber placed the maker of this drawing in the circle of the German artist Hans von Aachen (1552-1615).^[6] The angular lines in the Virgin’s robe correspond to drawings by him, as examples in Paris and New York show.^[7] The quality of our drawing, however, indicates that it must have been made not by Von Aachen himself, but by a less experienced German artist in his circle. This is perfectly possible, because Del Sarto’s popularity extended beyond Italy thanks to the existence of multiple copies. If the drawing was indeed made in Germany, the artist must have based it on one of the many copies of Del Sarto’s work that were in circulation. It is also possible, though, that the artist was in Italy himself and worked from one of Del Sarto’s preliminary studies referred to above. The watermark of the drawing can probably be placed in Germany. The double-headed eagle corresponds to a mark in paper that was manufactured in Weimar around 1554, in other words at least thirty years after Del Sarto’s autograph work.^[8] Because of this dating, and also because of the concealed genitalia, the drawing must have been made in the second half of the sixteenth century. For now, the maker remains anonymous.