The holy family

The flight to Egypt is very frequent. It is an independent representation but it is also a means to show the Holy Family. Mary is sitting on a donkey and holds the child in her arms while Joseph leads the beast. Sometimes the ox of the crib of Bethlehem follows them.

In the 17th century, the donkey was considered too familiar and the flight became a long walk; which implied a bigger child or a baby carried in an osier cot on Joseph’s back.

The return from Egypt, seven years later according to the legend, is much rarer.

The rest in Egypt.

During the flight to Egypt, the Holy Family is having a rest, which is the opportunity for a rather intimate scene; Joseph is asleep, Mary feeds Jesus at the breast or rocks him.

Sometimes, a palm tree leans by itself towards Mary who wanted its fruit and shadow. According to the legend, the palm has become, for this reason, the sign of the reward to martyrs.

At Nazareth, the Christ Child quietly plays between Mary and Joseph. Realist painters like to represent an ordinary family; old Joseph works in his carpenter’s workshop, helped by Jesus while Mary, always young, is busy doing the housework.

The Holy Family can receive the visit of Elizabeth and her son John the Baptist.

Details are not innocent; for example, the bread and the apple recall sin and redemption. 

Jesus, more or less old, plays or works but all the elements are symbolical. Here he rescues a bird caught in thorns making a crown; elsewhere one can find a bird whose stretched wings make a cross, a lamb that evokes the sacrifice, a bunch of blood-red grapes, an olive branch recalling the Garden of Olives…which are, as always, symbols of the Passion. Mary is thinking and suffering.

On another register, Jesus can also make miracles one after the other like flying the birds of clay he has moulded… The imagination of the Apocrypha is boundless.

The Holy Family can be reduced to the Virgin and Child.

Mary holds Jesus in her arms or on her lap. This representation is very frequent in medieval statuary and in Renaissance painting but its spirit is then different.

In Romanesque art, the Virgin in majesty represents God’s Mother; she is severe, sitting on a throne. She holds a child dressed as an adult and erect so that he can be worshipped. Some Virgins are black-faced without any known reason. In Baroque art, some statues are dressed in very precious materials and jewels varying with the moments of the year. They are carried in processions.

With the Virgin of Tenderness, the relations of intimacy between the mother and her child are put forward. The baby sucks his mother’s breast, the mother caresses him… Renaissance Italian painting creates a real model of Madonna and Child. They are surrounded with fruit or birds whose symbolical values are sometimes difficult to interpret: the apple evokes sin, bread and grapes recall the Eucharist and the bird is an image of salvation. Other elements evoke the virginity of Mary: the enclosed garden, rose-bushes, the fountain, the olive tree, lilies, the door, the mirror…they come from the litanies of the Virgin, which have been, in their turn, drawn from the Song of Solomon.

The Holy Family extended to John the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth.

Mary and Elizabeth had visited each other when they were pregnant (See the Visitation), they are again together with their children. When there is a man, he is necessarily Joseph, for Zachary, John’s father, has been killed by Herod.

According to a mystic vision by Saint Bonaventura, a 13^th century Franciscan friar, John and Jesus played together after the return from Egypt. John is slightly older than Jesus; they play with a very fine cross and a lamb which are the symbols of the Passion. But they are not equal; John is leaning towards Jesus who blesses him. The children can be represented alone, without their parents.

The grandmother, the mother and the grandson. Mary has a mother, Anne, and as she is young the three generations are put together.

This Holy Kinship is a completely apocryphal creation but it has developed with the cult of Mary.

The Holy Kinship can be extended.

Since the Gospels mention the two Mary’s whose sons are among the apostles, the legends have made them the half-sisters of Jesus’ mother. According to this legend, Anne is said to have had three husbands and three daughters and of her six grand-children five are said to have become apostles. A few painters then place side by side Mary, her two half-sisters who bear the name of their respective fathers: Mary [the daughter of] Cleophas, Alphee’s wife, and Mary [the daughter of ] Salome, Zebedee’s wife. The former is the mother of James the Minor, Jude and Simon, the latter is the mother of James the major and John the evangelist. This large family can also be extended to the cousin Elizabeth and to John the Baptist… all the children seem to be the same age.

This extended kinship is unknown in Italy and becomes rare with the Catholic Reformation.

The Holy Family at table of course refers to the Last Supper.

Carracci’s representation is original for Christ turns towards Joseph who is thus given some importance. The representation of Joseph and Jesus alone was rather frequent in the 17^th century. As for Mary, she turns away from the child as if she saw the future.

Scenes of life at Nazareth:

Jesus helps his father, the carpenter.

Jesus in his parents’ vineyard.

The spectators, boy-angels in Honthorst, become little girls in Denis.

The three generations: Jesus, his mother Mary, his grand-mother Anne form the Holy Kinship, and even a true Trinity in the Master of Francfort’s panel. Leonardo da Vinci transforms the scene by humanizing it and adding the grand-cousin, John the Baptist.

Virgins and Child.

In Gerard David, the Virgin and Child are placed in a precise context, that of the rest during the flight to Egypt.

In Raphael, the context disappears, the picture becomes a sort of icon, hence its success throughout the centuries and civilisations.

Two deviations of the Virgin and Child,

towards allegory in Cranach,

towards the portrait in Fouquet who represents Agnès Sorel, King Charles VII’s mistress, as Mary.