The Holy Family

The Pinacoteca di Faenza’s collection includes a substantial corpus of religious works by Felice Giani. Famous for his personal take on Neoclassicism, in large decorative schemes portraying secular and mythological subjects, Giani did, in fact, also turn his hand to religious painting throughout his life, producing ephemeral works for liturgical use, altarpieces and, more frequently, small paintings for private devotion.

The Pinacoteca di Faenza’s small panel, one of the latter group, depicts The Holy Family, a subject of which the painter was especially fond and to which he turned his hand on more than one occasion, because it allowed him to address the more human, universal side of a religion that was also deeply bound to the earthly dimension of life. The Virgin is feeding the Christ Child from a small cup while St. Joseph draws wine from a cask: everyday gestures and Christological symbology (the wine of the Eucharist) are set side by side very naturally and with good-natured irony. The setting is deliberately plebeian, both the environment and the furnishings midway between the domestic and the makeshift suggesting that the family is portrayed during a moment of rest whilst travelling.

The technique, a very liquid tempera applied rapidly on the support almost without any primer, is exceptional. The figure of the Virgin in the foreground, in particular, is executed with extremely rapid brushwork, with colours applied in patches and modelled only with a hint of basic draughtsmanship. The result is an image in which the immediacy of the technique finds an effective match in the occasional nature of the scene, which has something of the quality of a live snap.