The Holy Family (?)

Baccio Bandinelli

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli produced a number of pen and ink studies on the theme of the Holy Family (the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and the Christ Child), all drawn with his typically incisive clarity of contour and orderly hatching. However, the reclining Classical-style female figure with one bare breast (at center) is not easily reconciled with traditional portrayals of the Virgin Mary. Rather, the arrangement of the figures in the present drawing may be inspired on the many variations of pose seen in the family groups among the Ancestors of Christ in Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling frescoes (1508–12). As a draughtsman, Bandinelli derived some of his techniques from Michelangelo as well as Rosso Fiorentino.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art