La Sainte Famille avec saint Jean-Baptiste enfant

Nosadella is barely a name today, a nickname really, taken from the Bologna street where Giovanni Francesco Bezzi kept his workshop around 1550. He worked in the strained, muscular style that spread out of Rome in Michelangelo's wake, where figures swell with exaggerated bulk and press together until the space feels tight. Here the holy family is packed into the frame, massive and restless. Instead of holding the infant out to us, Mary turns her back and the child twists away, reaching. For a long time scholars could not decide whether the picture was Nosadella's own hand or that of his teacher Pellegrino Tibaldi, since the two painted so much alike. It was the tortured energy of these bodies that finally settled the question on the pupil.