Holy Family
1527–85
Medium
Brush and brown ink
Dimensions
14 1/4 x 9 3/4in. (36.2 x 24.8cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Cephas G. Thompson, 1887
Accession Number
87.12.13
Tags
Art Historical Context
Luca Cambiaso’s *Holy Family* is a delicate yet expressive drawing created with brush and brown ink, measuring just over fourteen inches in height. Produced during the artist’s lifetime (1527–85), the work captures the tender grouping of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and the Christ Child. Cambiaso, active in sixteenth-century Genoa, frequently explored religious subjects in this fluid medium, allowing him to emphasize graceful contours and subtle tonal contrasts without the finality of paint. Drawings such as this one held an important place in Renaissance artistic practice. They often serve...
About the Artist
Luca Cambiaso · 1527–1585
Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585) was an Italian painter and draftsman who dominated artistic life in Genoa during the second half of the sixteenth century and became one of the most innovative draftsmen of the Late Renaissance. Born in Moneglia near Genoa, he trained under his father, the painter Giovanni Cambiaso, and demonstrated precocious talent, reportedly completing his first public fresco commissi...