The Holy Family with Saint John

This Holy Family with Saint John, attributed to Mantegna's late period around 1500, brings together the domestic world of the holy family with the Baptist child who will one day announce Christ's mission. The intimacy of the composition — Mary, Joseph, the infant Christ, and the young John in close grouping — reflects the late medieval devotional tradition of affective piety, which encouraged worshippers to imagine themselves present in the sacred domestic scenes of the Gospels. Mantegna's characteristic sculptural precision persists even in this intimate subject: the figures' forms are clearly articulated beneath their drapery, their expressions combining tenderness with the gravity appropriate to holy personages.

Mantegna's characteristically crisp, linear draftsmanship gives the figures a relief-like quality, with precise drapery folds and hard-edged forms that contrast with the softer Venetian style of his brother-in-law Bellini.