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A catalogue raisonnee of the Holy Families painted by distinguished artists including from two to six figures would fill volumes:  I shall content myself with directing attention to some few examples remarkable either for their celebrity, their especial beauty, or for some peculiarity, whether commendable or not, in the significance or the treatment.

The strictly domestic conception may be said to have begun with Raphael and Correggio; and they afford the most perfect examples of the tender and the graceful in sentiment and action, the softest parental feeling, the loveliest forms of childhood.  Of the purely natural and familiar treatment, which came into fashion in the seventeenth century, the pictures of Guido, Rubens, and Murillo afford the most perfect specimens.

1.  Raphael. (Louvre, 377.) Mary, a noble queenly creature, is seated, and bends towards her Child, who is springing from his cradle to meet her embrace; Elizabeth presents St. John; and Joseph, leaning on his hand, contemplates the group:  two beautiful angels scatter flowers from above.  This is the celebrated picture once supposed to have been executed expressly for Francis I.; but later researches prove it to have been painted for Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino.[1]

[Footnote 1:  It appears from the correspondence relative to this picture and the “St. Michael,” that both pictures were painted by order of this Lorenzo de’ Medici, the same who is figured in Michael Angelo’s Pensiero, and that they were intended as presents to Francis I. (See Dr. Gaye’s Carteggio, ii. 146, and also the new Catalogue of the Louvre by F. Villot.) I have mentioned this Holy Family not as the finest of Raphael’s Madonnas, but because there is something peculiarly animated and dramatic in the motif, considering the time at which it was painted.  It was my intention to have given here a complete list of Raphael’s Holy Families; but this has been so well done in the last English edition of Kugler’s Handbook, that it has become superfluous as a repetition.  The series of minute and exquisite drawings by Mr. George Scharf, appended to Kugler’s Catalogue, renders it easy to recognize all the groups described in this and the preceding pages.]

2.  Correggio.  Mary holds the Child upon her knee, looking down upon him fondly.  Styled, from the introduction of the work-basket, La Vierge au Panier.  A finished example of that soft, yet joyful, maternal feeling for which Correggio was remarkable. (National Gal. 23.)

3.  Pinturicchio.  In a landscape, Mary and Joseph are seated together; near them are some loaves and a small cask of wine.  More in front the two children, Jesus and St. John, are walking arm in arm; Jesus holds a book and John a pitcher, as if they were going to a well. (Siena Acad.)

4.  Andrea del Sarto.  The Virgin is seated on the ground, and holds the Child; the young St. John is in the arms of St. Elizabeth, and Joseph is seen behind. (Louvre, 439.) This picture, another by the same painter in the National Gallery, a third in the collection of Lord Lansdowne, and in general all the Holy Families of Andrea, may be cited as examples of fine execution and mistaken or defective character.  No sentiment, no action, connects the personages either with each other, or with the spectator.