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Holy Family with Saint Anne (recto); Figure Sketches (verso)

Creator

Italian Artist · 1612–1650

Among the most renowned Italian printmakers and draftsmen of the 1600s, Pietro Testa desired fame as a history painter but never achieved it. According to his biographer, Testa's "talent inclined him strongly towards philosophy, and made him prefer retirement and solitude. . . . [H]e could never accommodate himself to playing the courtier in antechambers." In Rome by the late 1620s, Testa drew hun

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Date: about 1645–1650
Medium: Pen and brown ink, brown wash, and black chalk (recto); faint black and red chalk (verso)
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

The Virgin Mary sits on a cushioned throne, watching her mother Saint Anne lovingly clutching the baby Jesus. On the right, Saint Joseph peers eagerly over her shoulder. A cluster of putti hovers overhead, carrying a large piece of fabric to shelter the Holy Family from behind. Pietro Testa produced two other compositional studies of this scene, probably in preparation for an altarpiece. Since this study lacks detail in the background and is the least finished of the three, it must be the earliest. The final drawing of the group is rounded at the top, implying a curved frame, but no final painting is known today.

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