The Holy Family in an Interior

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Ferdinand Bol made this etching just one year after he left the studio of his famous teacher, Rembrandt van Rijn, adopting his master’s motif of a dark domestic interior as the setting for a biblical scene. Here, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus sit within a contemporary Dutch interior with the light from a window the sole source of illumination, revealing an open book at a small desk. The rest of the room is in deep shadow. As Mary nurses the child, Joseph stands by with a swaddling cloth. To their left is a curtained cupboard bed of the type commonly found within Dutch living rooms, a bassinet, a nursing basket set on its end , a chair, and various vessels and containers. To the right of the family is a hearth and the barely discernible cat, calmly watching the scene. Bol’s broad, meshed lines simultaneously darken the room and reveal the various, closely observed domestic objects related to caring for an infant. The tall basket laid on its end visible in this composition is a bakermat , a legless couch typical in 17th-century Netherlands that was placed on the floor for nursing.