The Holy Family

Around 1500, German and Netherlandish altarpieces loved to show Saint Anne among a huge family, her three husbands, her three daughters all named Mary, and their children. Once the Council of Trent rejected the legend of those three marriages, the full crowd largely vanished from painting. What survived was a smaller circle, the families of Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist. Maulbertsch painted that version around 1755, and the Belvedere calls it The Holy Kinship. He put Anne, the grandmother, at the centre. Mary sits beside her with the child on her lap, and Joseph looks down from behind. Their faces are unusually individual, while the angels in the clouds are dashed off in a sketchy, almost grotesque way. God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit hover above, and in the foreground a man sits reading scripture.