Holy Family
El Greco·1582
Historical Context
El Greco's Holy Family of around 1582 depicts Mary, Joseph, and the infant Christ in the intimate domestic setting of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt tradition, the natural warmth of family love infused with the supernatural awareness of the child's divine destiny. El Greco's Holy Families combine the intimacy appropriate to devotional private images with the spiritual intensity of his public altarpieces, and the tension between ordinary human affection and sacred mystery gives them a psychological depth beyond simple devotional illustration.
Technical Analysis
El Greco renders the holy family with warm, Venetian-influenced color and relatively naturalistic proportions, showing the transitional style of his early Spanish period before his most extreme elongations developed.
