Holy Family with Angels

John Wright grew up in Dorchester, a Boston neighbourhood, and rose through the Catholic Church to become a cardinal in 1969 and head of the Vatican office that oversees the world's priests. In Rome he acquired this small painting from the heirs of Louis Durand de Corbiac, whose family had kept it at Lembras, in south-western France. When Wright died in 1979 he left it to his sister and her husband, the Havertys of Boston, and four years later they gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in his memory.

Albani painted it around 1608 to 1610 in Rome, where he had followed his teacher Annibale Carracci from Bologna. Mary sits on the ground with the Child on her lap, Joseph leans in from the right, and two angels press close on the left. The museum points out how solid these figures are, wrapped in twisting drapery and squeezed into a shallow space so that they carry the weight of sculpture, though the whole picture is only about 36 centimetres high.