Holy Family with Saint John

Stefano Pieri XVI sec. d.C./ ultimo quarto

Audio description of the artwork

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The central composition of the painting, which features the Virgin Mary crowned by the Child Jesus with a garland, derives from a Virgin Mary with Child by Alessandro Allori in the Palatine Gallery in Florence. In both artworks, Mary accentuates the torsion movement of the bust, almost as if seeking complicity in the viewer's gaze. The detail of the basket with the sewing work abandoned on the ground, present in both paintings, emphasises how the divine event is set in an intimate atmosphere of human everyday life, the same as that found here with Saint Joseph, who snoozes and, almost bored, benevolently watches the scene.

Technical information

Author: Stefano Pieri
Title: Holy Family with Saint John
Date: XVI sec. d.C./ ultimo quarto
Material and technique: Oil on canvas
Size: 100x78 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
First Floor

In the past, the artwork has been attributed to Giovan Maria Butteri, a pupil of Bronzino and close to Allori, but more recently it has been likened for stylistic reasons to Stefano Pieri, also a pupil of Bronzino and like Butteri engaged in the decoration of the first corridor of the Uffizi with Allori around 1581. The painting is characterised by uniform colour tones, playing on brown and pink tones, and a particular realism in the rendering of faces and details, hallmarks of Pieri's work. This artist, whose catalogue of artworks is still being compiled, often worked in the plain between Florence and Pistoia, so much so that the most striking stylistic comparisons have been suggested with his Madonna in Gloria (Virgin Mary in Glory) in the Pistoiese church of Santa Maria Assunta in Badia a Pacciana, where similarities can be found in facial types, poses, gestures and use of colour, and in two other paintings of his now in the Accademia Gallery in Florence.