Bracci Holy Family

In 1579 a Florentine churchman, Monsignor Antonio Bracci, handed this panel over to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, who would later become grand duke. Handing it over was the sensible thing to do when a Medici admired something you owned. What the Bracci did first was order a copy from Alessandro Allori, a busy Florentine painter, so the family kept a version of the picture on their wall. It was the second copy made of it. An earlier one had already been painted by Pier Francesco Foschi while the original was still in the house. Andrea made it around 1523 for Zanobi Bracci, a merchant, as a domestic devotional picture: the Virgin seated with the Child standing at her knee, the infant John the Baptist stretched out below, Joseph behind them in shadow. The cardinal took it to Rome, where it stayed for most of a century before coming back to Florence.