Artwork
The Holy Family
The Holy Family is an unspecified painting by Giovanni Battista Bertucci. It dates from 1493 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
About this work
Overview
This devotional panel, painted around 1493 by Giovanni Battista Bertucci, presents a quiet domestic scene of the Holy Family.
This devotional panel, painted around 1493 by Giovanni Battista Bertucci, presents a quiet domestic scene of the Holy Family. Bertucci worked primarily in Faenza, a city in Italy's Romagna region, during the early decades of the sixteenth century. The painting now belongs to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, where it represents the refined, gentle aesthetic that characterized much central Italian religious art of this period.
Subject & Meaning
The composition centers on three seated figures: the Virgin Mary, clad in dark garments, cradles the naked infant Christ, who extends his small hands toward Joseph. The older man, marked by a solemn expression and grasping a long staff, completes the familial triad. The child's gesture toward Joseph affirms the sacred kinship, while the restrained emotional register—Mary's calm, Joseph's gravity—lends the scene an intimate, contemplative quality rather than dramatic spectacle.
Technique & Style
Bertucci deployed chiaroscuro to model the figures with soft shadows, lifting them from a comparatively flat background of distant architecture and trees. The gentle transitions between light and dark reveal the influence of Umbrian painters, particularly Perugino and Pinturicchio, whose graceful, rounded forms and atmospheric landscapes shaped Bertucci's approach. A small ledge at the lower edge, bearing a book or box, anchors the sacred group in a believable, if spare, domestic space.
History & Provenance
The artist's broader corpus, including a signed *Majesty* dated 1506, confirms his sustained engagement with Peruginesque and Umbrian visual traditions. This stylistic allegiance places him within a network of painters who transmitted central Italian refinement to provincial centers like Faenza. The painting's passage into the Museum of Fine Arts Boston collection preserves one of the relatively few documented works from his hand.
Artist & collection
Artist
Giovanni Battista da Faenza, called Bertucci, who painted in the style of Perugino and Pinturicchio, flourished in the early part of the 16th century at Faenza.
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