The Holy Family with the young St John the Baptist

Girolamo del Pacchia's Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist, from around 1510 and now in the Ashmolean Museum, exemplifies the Sienese High Renaissance interpretation of a subject that also preoccupied Florentine and Roman painters in the same years. Pacchia was a technically skilled Sienese artist who worked alongside Sodoma and Girolamo Genga, all of them absorbing new currents of Florentine and Roman influence while retaining something of Siena's native delicacy of colour. The pairing of the infant Christ and the young John the Baptist in the company of the Holy Family was beloved in Florentine and Sienese private devotion, presenting the two future martyrs in an intimate familial setting before the tragedies of their adult lives. The Ashmolean work shows Pacchia's ability to integrate warm colouring, gentle figure interaction, and landscape backgrounds in a manner fully consonant with the ideals of the Italian High Renaissance.

Warm Sienese colouring dominates with the Virgin's blue mantle contrasting against a rose-red undergarment. Figures are modelled with soft transitions, avoiding harsh outline in the Florentine manner. The young Baptist's russet cloak and the Christ child's warm flesh create chromatic harmony. The landscape background recedes through atmospheric blue-green haze.