Sacra Famiglia con le sante Anna e Caterina d’Alessandria (1648)

Ribera, Jusepe de (1591-1652)

Sacra Famiglia con le sante Anna e Caterina d’Alessandria (The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria)
1648
Oil on canvas, 209.6 x 154.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York

A masterpiece of the artist’s maturity, this painting combines the naturalism and quality of physical presence associated with Caravaggio with the elevated formal language of Raphael. Spanish by birth, Ribera lived all of his adult life in Rome and Naples, then part of the Spanish Empire. During his early years in Rome, he adopted Caravaggio’s practice of working directly from posed models, enabling him to give vibrant presence to figures inhabiting a sacred realm. Famous in his own day, Ribera had an enormous influence on nineteenth-century painters. This work was already in England by 1824. (MET)