Holy Family With Saint Elizabeth - Risen Christ

Venetian school, 16th century

Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth - Risen Christ

(2) Oil on copper, cm 24.5 x 16.5

With frame, cm 67 x 41


The pair of ramini that is described here can be traced, by style and subject, to the production of the 17th century in Veneto. In particular the Holy Family is close to the subject depicted by Hans Rottenhammer (Munich, 1564 - Augsburg, 1625) and now preserved at the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. The German painter with the help of Count William V of Bavaria was sent to Italy for a training trip. Here he worked with Paul Bril in Rome and Jan Brueghel the Elder, with whom he worked on a four-hand painting of Christ’s descent into limbo, before settling in Venice in 1596 as an assistant to Adam Elsheimer. He stayed for 10 years in Veneto before returning to Germany in 1606; during this long stay he was inspired by the great masters of Venice, especially by Tintoretto, whose admirer he was, and his school. The subject of the risen Christ, which appears in all its breaking breaking open clouds, was typical in the art of the period Veneto, as well as the Holy Family for other, But the strong contrasts and bright rendering of the tones so vivid and textural approach the work of Rottenhammer to that of Tintoretto. The Venetian suggestions are complemented by those from northern Europe and the great European courts: The mannerism which spread in Germany and in the Habsburg Empire during the second half of the sixteenth century had produced extravagant models for diabolical and monstrous figures similar to the demon crushed by the risen Christ. Considering also the area of origin of the painter must be considered absolutely the furrow of the artistic environment in which he grew up and in which he took his first steps before apprenticeship in Italy.To complete these splendid paintings on copper are installed two frames in carved wood, lacquered and gilded architectural structure on a base of volutes with crowned heraldic shield.