The Holy Family

This painting may be identified as the “Mad.a et Giesù, San Giuseppe di Rutilio” (“Virgin and Jesus, St. Joseph by Rutilio”) recorded in an inventory drafted on the death of a Sienese aristocrat named Emilio Tantucci on 29 August 1638, or else it might be the Holy Family on canvas in a black frame decorated with gold, listed among the possessions of Domenico Manetti, the painter’s son, in 1663 (Ciampolini 2006).

Federico Argnani (1881) thought that the picture was by Ribera. It was not until 1951 that Antonio Corbara, who had been tasked with drafting the entry for the Soprintendenza di Bologna, mentioned a communication from Roberto Longhi identifying Rutilio Manetti as the artist, an attribution that no scholar has ever questioned since.

Alessandro Bagnoli dated the work c. 1628 on the strength of its strong similarity with an altarpiece depicting St. Anthony the Abbot Exorcising a Possessed Woman in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena, painted in that year. The clear and balanced composition and the depiction of strong, powerful figures who almost appear to be sculpted by the light coming from a specific source, are distinctive features of Manetti’s work in the later 1620s such as the Lucretia now in the Chigi Saracini collection or the Ecstasy of St. Jerome in the collections of the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

After showing interest in the structured forms of the classicists, especially Guercino, and studying the artificial, sharply contrasting chiaroscuro of Gherardo delle Notti, Manetti turned his attention to Caravaggio’s exploration of reality. The painting is imbued with a clear feeling of tenderness, which we can read in the affectionate gazes of the Virgin and St. Joseph as they watch over the slumbering child in her lap while Joseph lovingly holds his hand. Yet the painting also contains an explicit allusion to the iconography of the Pietà, and the Christ Child’s deep sleep seems to foreshadow that of Christ lying in his grieving mother’s lap after his death on the cross.