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The Holy Family

Creator

Italian Artist · 1481–1536

Though Baldassare Peruzzi's artistic versatility was not uncommon in the 1500s, he was most successful as a draftsman and architect. An early promoter of axonometric drawing, he made much-admired studies of antique buildings. Many of his painted house facades, all now destroyed, were meant to look like grand "ancient" sculptural facades, wittily combining his characteristic illusionism with antiqu

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Date: about 1515
Medium: Pen and brown ink, black chalk; top left squared in black chalk for transfer
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

In this intimate portrait of the Holy Family, Joseph leans protectively over the shoulder of the Virgin Mary, who twists around to show him the Christ Child. Baldassare Peruzzi drew the figures so that the viewer seems to be looking up at them, while they in turn look back down at the viewer. Deftly handling the point of the quill, Peruzzi indicated both the lighting and the volume of the forms with a delicate network of hatching and cross-hatching. Numerous lines suggest the wavy strands of Joseph's hair and beard, the Madonna's long, flowing robes, and her strong legs beneath the folds of fabric. A grid in black chalk has been drawn over the figures of the Virgin and Child in order to simplify copying the drawing onto another surface.

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