Holy Family with the Infant Saint John

Domenico Puligo painted this panel around 1526, near the end of his career. The following year plague swept Florence, and he was among those who died. The Virgin takes up most of the picture. The Child leans out from her lap towards the grey-bearded Saint Joseph, seen in profile, and the small John the Baptist, who holds a slender cross. Mary's face is modelled so softly that its edges seem to dissolve, while Joseph's profile is drawn with a firmer line. Find her left hand, resting against the Child's side. Scholars have noted several changes there, where the painter reworked its position. Behind the figures rises a spur of rock. Where the picture was before 1833 is unknown. That year it appears in a Borghese inventory as in the manner of Andrea del Sarto, and in 1893 the art historian Adolfo Venturi gave it to Puligo.