Holy Family and the Family of Saint John the Baptist

Andrea Mantegna was near the end of a long career when he laid out this unusually long, narrow band of figures, a little over a foot and a half tall but well over five feet wide. When he died in 1506 it was still in his studio, and by his own wish it went to the chapel he had prepared for his own burial in the Basilica of Sant'Andrea in Mantua. That chapel was dedicated to John the Baptist, which is why the Baptist's family crowds in on one side, his mother Elizabeth and his old father Zacharias, gathered around the Holy Family. The picture still hangs where Mantegna wanted it, in the church where he was laid to rest.