Holy Family

The Holy Family, a painting from the early 19th century, depicts the Child deeply asleep, while the Virgin is gathered in prayer and Saint Joseph makes the gesture that invites contemplative silence. The iconography of the Sleeping Child, widely used in the devotional sphere, derives from 17th-century Emilian examples, in particular from Guido Reni’s model, which Landi studied extensively during his formative years between Parma and Piacenza. At least two variants of the work are known, one in a private collection in Lariano – with a different arrangement of the characters (fig.2) – and one in another private collection, slightly larger, in which the Virgin has a decorated dress and veil and St. Joseph is visibly older (fig.3).

A refined and poetic canvas in which one can read the uniqueness of Gaspare Landi’s painting, which, moreover, differentiates it from the severe and balanced work of his friend Camuccini, consists of that naturalistic delicacy that finds its culmination in the restrained pathos of the figures, the velvety colourism of the Venetian tradition and the attention to the manifestation of different human dispositions and expressions. Remaining faithful, however, to the formal ideal of beauty and grace, he knows how to conduct the introspective and sentimental investigation of each character in an astonishing manner; a quality that comes to light not only in his portraiture, but also and above all in his execution of choral scenes, be they mythological, historical or sacred subjects, just as emerges from this Holy Family.