MICHELE TOSINI, CALLED MICHELE DI RIDOLFO DEL GHIRLANDAIO | THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE YOUNG SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

A. Nesi, 'Bartolomeo Traballesi sacro e profano', in Nuovi Studi, 2008, 14, pp. 101 and 105 n. 27, reproduced pl. 124.

"I love the delicate play of hands, so typically mannerist, between Mother and Child. It reminds us of the loving bond between the two figures, but also provides an important horizontal axis for the design which intersects with the sharp diagonal which runs through the Virgin's veil down to the Baptist."

Edoardo Roberti

Tosini's depiction of the Holy Family is typical of Florentine painting around 1560. The figure of the Virgin mirrors that found in the artist's Nativity in Passignano Abbey (fig. 1), which also dates from this period. We find the same depiction of the hair of the Christ Child, the thick curls shining with highlights, and in the angels kneeling either side of the Virgin, the swollen upper eyelids, so typical of Tosini, and the haloes edged with a very thin gold filament. The physiognomy of the Virgin, with her straight-nosed profile, her small well-drawn full mouth and her curved eyebrows, find echoes in the allegory of The Night in the Galleria Colonna but also in the Leda from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The artist's characteristic mannerist idiosyncracies can be seen throughout the work: in the mother's affected gesture, with her unnaturally long hands and her elbows held away from her sides; in the contrapposto pose of the Infant; and in the way the figures betray no emotion on their faces, while avoiding each other's gazes.