The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist
Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
c. 1615
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 114.5 × 91.5 cm (45 1/8 × 36 in.); Framed: 137.8 × 115.6 × 12.7 cm (54 1/4 × 45 1/2 × 5 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Peter Paul Rubens’s distinctive blend of fleshy figures and heroic actions dominated the artistic ethos of Antwerp (in present-day Belgium) for much of the 1600s. Here, he translated a sacred subject into vernacular language. The infant Jesus cuddles on the lap of his mother, Mary, whose exposed breast serves as a visual reminder of the human needs of Jesus, also the child of God. Her elderly cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, look on in wonder and awe, and Joseph, Mary’s husband, tends to a lamb, a symbol of Jesus’s eventual self-sacrifice. Notably, not one of these figures bears a halo, and they are all wearing contemporary dress. Furthermore, not one engages with the viewer; rather, they participate in a series of interlocked gazes that ultimately lead back to Mary. Rubens energized the European art market with his robust and monumental forms, inspired by those of Michelangelo and Raphael that he had seen in Italy. A consummate businessman, Rubens not only directed assistants to paint multiple variants of this composition, but he also commissioned engravings after it. It was an early success for the young, ambitious painter, who achieved a harmonious blend…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
