Holy Family (Madonna with Beardless Joseph) - Raphaello Santi

Painting Detail

Holy Family (Madonna with Beardless Joseph)
Artist: Raphaello Santi
Medium: Painting, Tempera and oil on canvas, 72.5x56.5 cm
Date: 1505-1506
Genre: Religious, Christianity
Source: Collection of baron L.A. Crozat de Tierra, Paris, 1772

Raphael painted this Holy Family during his stay in Florence, possibly for the ruler of Urbino, Guidobaldo Montefeltro. With its mood of sublime sorrow, in this picture anything prosaic or banal would be alien to the heroes, yet this does not deprive them of a feeling of naturalness. The smooth lines, the harmonious combination of colours and the compact composition all contribute to create a sense of monumentality and grandeur. The soft chiaroscuro modelling the forms is evidence of the influence of Leonardo da Vinci on the young artist.

Raphaello Santi / Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 - April 6, 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality.

He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504-1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.