Virgin and Child, St. Elizabeth and the infant St. John the Baptist (Medici Holy Family)

Ottaviano de' Medici ordered this in 1529, a bad year to be a Medici in Florence. The family had been thrown out of the city two years earlier, the republic was back, and an imperial army was on its way to put the Medici in again by siege. He wanted a small picture to pray in front of at home. Vasari, who knew him, says he already owned two Madonnas by Andrea and asked specifically for something in the painter's latest manner. Andrea had about a year to live. The title calls it a Holy Family, but Joseph is not in it. The figures are the Virgin and Child with Saint Elizabeth and her son, the infant John the Baptist, whose slender reed cross is propped in the lower left corner. Until October 2024 one more Andrea hung in these rooms, a panel of Joseph painted for a Florentine bedchamber, which moved to the Uffizi to rejoin three of its companions.