Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530)
Sacra Famiglia con San Giovannino (Holy Family with St John the Baptist)
c.1529
Oil on panel, 129 x 100 cm
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
A painting on the subject of the Holy Family with St John the Baptist was mentioned in the 16th century in a life of Andrea del Sarto by Giorgio Vasari, famous biographer of many Italian artists. This can possibly be indentified with the Hermitage picture, a work from the artist’s late period, during which Mannerist characteristics were beginning to make themselves strongly felt in his art. We can feel this in the intense colours, in the tension of the contours and in the movements of the figures – which reveal an energy not justified by the usually static subject. The figures are modelled with soft chiaroscuro and Andrea managed to give the shadows both a feeling of transparency and yet of colour. In the artist’s early works the outlines of figures seemed to dissolve as if into the airy atmosphere, but here their plasticity and expressiveness of form seem to recall sculpture. (SHM)
Compare:
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530)
Sacra Famiglia con San Giovannino
c.1528
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530)
Sacra Famiglia Medici
c.1529
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Firenze