Holy Family with St. Anne and the Infant St. John

Look at the stone under the Christ Child's left foot and you will find the painter's name cut into it, as if by a mason: BROZINO FIORETINO, Bronzino the Florentine. The placing is deliberate. In Florence in the 1540s, artists and scholars were arguing over which art ranked higher, painting or sculpture, and in 1547 the scholar Benedetto Varchi collected written opinions on the question from leading artists, Bronzino among them. Here he answers with a brush. The two boys, Jesus turned straight out toward us and the young John the Baptist pointing up at him, are modelled so hard and smooth that they read almost as marble. Behind them Mary strokes her son, and Anne and Joseph close the group at the back. The museum dates the poplar panel to about 1540.