The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist and St. Elizabeth

Poussin painted this in 1651, and though he was French he had long since made his home in Rome, sending finished pictures north to patrons in a France that was tearing itself apart in the civil wars known as the Fronde. This commission came from Charles, Duke of Crequy, a French nobleman. It is one of five Holy Families Poussin worked out between 1648 and 1655, each set in a broad, still landscape and composed with the calm, measured order he was known for. Mary, in blue and red, holds the infant Christ on her knee as he leans to greet the small John the Baptist, with Joseph and Elizabeth looking on and a large stone basin nearby that hints at the baptism to come. Off in the bright distance a family rows away from a band of horsemen, a quiet echo of the Holy Family's own flight into Egypt.