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The Holy Family with Angels

Defendente Ferrari (Italian, active ca. 1500-1535) (Painter)
ca. 1520 (Renaissance)
oil and gold leaf on wood panel
(Renaissance Europe )

Enthroned as Queen of Heaven, Mary holds her son, who turns with an affectionate gesture to embrace Saint Joseph while angels play music. Mary's husband is pictured as an old man who needs to use glasses to read. The inscription on the scroll below tells us that Mary was both mother and virgin, and Joseph's old age testifies to the Christian miracle of the virgin birth. The painting was probably the central part of a polyptych (an altarpiece consisting of several panels).

Rather than looking to ancient art as a model as so many of his Italian contemporaries did, Defendente Ferrari considered northern European painting with its close attention to naturalistic detail to be a proper source for engaging religious art.

Inscription

[Transcription] In scroll at bottom: PARTVS ET INTEGRITAS DISCORDES TEMPORE LVNGO | VIRGINIS IN GREMIO FOEDERA PACIS HABENT; [Translation] Childbirth and chastity, long time discordant, have a bond of peace in the lap of the Virgin

Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1897 catalogue: no. 90, as manner of Filippo Lippi]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Conservation

Date Description Narrative
Examination examined for condition
10/25/1939 Treatment repaired; cleaned; coated; re-housed
6/28/1942 Treatment cleaned; loss compensation; coated
1/1/1953 Examination examined for condition
10/14/1964 Treatment coated; loss compensation
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Geographies

Italy, Piedmont (Place of Origin)

Measurements

Painted surface H: 57 7/8 x W: 28 3/8 x D excluding cradle: 3/8 in. (147 x 72 x 1 cm)

Credit Line

Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902

Location in Museum

Charles Street: Third Floor: 15th-Century Italian Art

Accession Number

In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.

37.711

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