The Holy Family on the Steps
Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665)
1648
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 103.5 x 135.3 x 13.3 cm (40 3/4 x 53 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.); Unframed: 73.3 x 105.8 cm (28 7/8 x 41 5/8 in.); Former: 72.3 x 104 cm (28 7/16 x 40 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 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 Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This deceptively simple composition represents a complex meditation on the Holy Family’s role in the redemption of humanity. At the center, Mary presents the Christ child to the world. At the left, Saint Elizabeth leans forward to foretell his eventual death, while her son, Saint John the Baptist, offers Jesus an apple, signifying humanity’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. At the right, Saint Joseph holds a compass, a sign of his occupation as a carpenter and also symbolic of God the Father. Poussin developed his composition meticulously and deliberately, using clear primary colors, simple forms, and a geometric organization to express the central importance of the Holy Family in Christian belief.
