Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Angels

From the 1690s to the 1890s, the Borghese household was never sure who had painted this small panel. An inventory of 1693 simply called it Dossi of Ferrara, which could mean either of the two brothers who worked for the Este dukes there. By 1833 the family's list had moved it to Garofalo, another painter from Ferrara. The name Battista Dossi came only in the late 19th century, from the connoisseur Giovanni Morelli, who judged pictures by a painter's habits in small things, and it has held ever since. The museum dates the panel to around 1535 to 1542. Almost half of it is landscape, a river winding past a town with towers towards blue mountains. The family sits in front of a ruined brick building overgrown with plants, where an angel holds out a bunch of flowers to the Child lying across his mother's lap.