The Holy Family with Saint Anne
Peter Paul Rubens, 1630
For now, just to look at
The photograph we have of this work is not sharp enough to print at the quality we want, so we are not selling it for now. We are looking for a better one.
About the work
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Date
- 1630
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 116 x 91 cm
- Collection
- Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (Room 076)
- Reference
- XDV-3526
What the museum label doesn't tell you
Look at the man on the right: barely a smear of shadow with two eyes peering out. He doesn't read as a serene patriarch but as someone spying on the scene, painted with loose strokes that nearly dissolve him into darkness. It's late Rubens, indebted to Titian — modeling without outlining. Facing him, the child and mother glow with polished, almost tactile flesh. That contrast isn't accidental: Velázquez chose this canvas for El Escorial, hanging it beside Titian and Raphael, as if acknowledging that here Rubens spoke their same pictorial language. Which one do you look at first — the child, or the man watching from the shadows?
